Ireland drops in Silicon Valley league table

The view that IT manufacturing jobs in traditional Western economies including Ireland are under threat from lower cost regions such as China is reinforced by a new international survey by Eurocom Worldwide in association with its Irish partner Simpson FT PR.

The study, which covered almost 200 senior IT executives in 16 countries including Ireland, also found that Ireland had fallen two places in the league table of countries with the potential to be the Silicon Valley of Europe.

The Eurocom study, which covered CEO and VP level executives, finds that Ireland has fallen from number one spot in terms of perception of potential to be Europe's tech capital.

Germany has the best potential to be the Europe's technology centre (17% of respondents) closely followed by Britain (15%) and Ireland (14%).

Finland (11%) and Sweden (10%) also scored well, perhaps reflecting the mobile and telco strengths in those markets.

Last year Ireland topped the survey in terms of its potential to be the tech capital of Europe.

Ronnie Simpson of Simpson Financial & Technology PR, the Irish partner of Eurocom Worldwide said: "Last year Ireland headed the list followed by Germany and the UK so it's positive to see that we are still considered in the top three in Europe".

The Eurocom study indicates a continuing threat to manufacturing jobs in traditional Western economies.

Almost two thirds of IT respondents (62%) believe that China will record the highest growth in technology manufacturing jobs over the next three years, far ahead of the US and Western Europe.

Other regions likely to benefit at the expense of traditional manufacturing economies are listed by the survey as India (first choice by 17% of respondents) and Central & Eastern Europe (first choice by 15%).

The study suggests that recovery in the technology market is imminent and will kick in over the second and third quarters of 2004 - and in some sectors may have already begun.

It finds that almost 50% of respondents believe that recovery will begin in the second (27%) or third (20%) quarters of this year.

One in three believes that the recovery has already begun.