The capacity to innovate and adapt is one of the Australia's strongest qualities and has made it an internationally recognised place to invest.

Always early adopters of innovative solutions, Australia is a nation of sophisticated ICT users who eagerly embrace new technology and a market that is extensively used by leading international companies to develop and trial new applications.

The Australian Government has taken action on a range of issues to ensure that ICT systems are interoperable, secure, broadly available and contribute to productivity gains.

From policies to encourage uptake of new technological solutions, to legislation to protect privacy and prevent spam, Australia is a location where companies can successfully develop solutions with global applicability.

Examples of international companies delivering solutions from Australia to both the region and the world include:

• Konica Minolta is developing multilingual training and documentation materials at its Asia‑Pacific Regional Headquarters in Sydney for distribution to its network of employees, partners and vendors in over 100 countries.
• IBM's Brisbane‑based Business Transformation Outsourcing and Asia Pacific Technical Support centres are both providing services and support to IBM's customers in the region, including Japan, Korea and China.
• Canon maintains its largest R&D Centre outside Japan in Sydney, employing 330 staff and accounting for more than 30 per cent of Canon's overseas development operations. Known as Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CiSRA), it develops cutting‑edge digital imaging and integration technologies and products for Canon's customers worldwide.
• Satyam Computer Services has established a global software development centre in Melbourne which is its largest outside India. The centre provides technical development and software support to Satyam's clients in Australia and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific.
• EMC, the US information storage and management company, is represented in over 50 countries. Australia hosts one of their four global support centre's, offering 24/7 support to EMC customers worldwide and catering to out-of-hours requests from the US and Europe.

Market size

Economic growth and strong technology spending go hand in hand in Australia. Total ICT spending in Australia in 2006 was forecast at just under US$50 billion, making Australia the twelfth largest ICT market in the world while being ranked 52nd¹ in the world by population. Australia is also the fifth largest ICT market in the Asia-Pacific region, after Japan, China, Korea and India². The 24,000 ICT businesses in Australia generate revenues in excess of A$80 billion.³

As a market, Australia has attributes in common with many other countries around the world. With business and government organisations that span across all sectors and range from very large organisations to small and medium-sized businesses, companies can experiment in Australia then use new approaches elsewhere.

There are opportunities from strong demanding vertical markets including the Australian Government (16.7 per cent of the market – note that this does not include local or state and territory governments), finance and business services (20.4 per cent), retail and wholesale (14.3 per cent) and transport and communications (12.7 per cent)⁴.   

Innovative culture

Australians have been quick to realise that ICT can substantially increase productivity. In fact, Australia leads all other OECD countries with the contribution of ICT to GDP averaging 0.915% per annum between 1995 and 2003⁵.

Australia's average annual increase in productivity of 2.2 per cent between 1991 and 2004 has outpaced the OECD average of 2.0 per cent for the same period⁶.

A dynamic research and development network of government, industry, universities, specialist institutions and private organisations is continuing to drive research into new products and processes.

As the knowledge economy gathers pace, a strong intellectual property framework is critical to business success. In terms of protection of intellectual property rights, Australia's patent and copyright enforcement regime is ranked second best in the Asia Pacific and among the best six in the world – and above the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States⁷. To assist with intellectual property matters, Australia is home to 1,000 registered patent and trademark attorneys⁸.

¹ US Census Bureau www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl
² Digital Planet 2006: The Global Information Economy, World Information and Technology Services Alliance, Arlington, 2006, p21.
³ ABS, Information and Communication Technology Australia 2002-03, published 21 Janurary 2005.
⁴ Digital Planet 2006: The Global Information Economy, World Information and Technology Services Alliance, Arlington, 2006, p63.
⁵ OECD Productivity Database, September 2005, www.oecd.org/statistics/productivity. 1995-2002 for Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and Spain.
⁶ OECD Productivity Database, 2006.
⁷ World Competitiveness Yearbook 2006, Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, 2006, p462.
⁸ www.ipaustralia.gov.au/pdfs/news/CMR07-050.pdf