Issued by The Economist's Intelligence Unit and sponsored by the BSA, the IT Competitiveness 2009 study puts Singapore 9th among 66 economies.

T&A: A study released one and a half weeks ago has recently ranked five Asia Pacific economies — Australia (7th), Singapore (9th), Japan (12th), Taiwan (15th) and South Korea (16th) — as among the Top 20 in the world in infotech (IT) industry competitiveness.

The study, now in its third year, was made by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and it compares the IT industry environments of 66 economies, to determine IT sector competitiveness.

According to Jeffrey Hardee, BSA Vice President and Regional Director, APAC, the IT sector remains an important engine of economic growth, and economies that support innovation and stimulate tech sector output will be in a stronger position to accelerate economic recovery. (more…)

While Indonesia continues to top the list among the 5 countries HWM is in, software piracy in South-east Asia has generally gone down or remained the same.

Want to know which top 10 countries have the highest software piracy rates in the world? Click on the image.

T&A: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) held a press conference yesterday and unveiled its Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study to the media. According to the study, PC software piracy rate in 2008 dropped in slightly more than half (57 countries) among the 110 countries studied worldwide, but remained the same in nearly one third (36) and rose in just 16.

This also means that worldwide piracy rate went up from 38% in 2007 to 41% in 2008. BSA attributed this rise to fast-growing PC shipments in high-piracy rate countries.

For the Asia Pacific alone, the average PC software piracy rate increased from 2007’s 59% to 2008’s 61%. According to Jeffrey Hardee, BSA’s VP and Regional Director, APAC, losses from this reached over US$15 billion. Hardee explained that this increase is the result of the mathematical outcome of more rapid growth of PC markets in APAC economies with higher piracy rates. (more…)