Given that Spain has already missed any opportunity to create an indigenous computer hardware industry, the government’s advisors are now claiming that the country has a chance to redeem itself in the software market. General opinion reckons that annual growth in hardware sales in Spain has already stabilised at 10% to 15% whilst software figures […]
Given that Spain has already missed any opportunity to create an indigenous computer hardware industry, the government’s advisors are now claiming that the country has a chance to redeem itself in the software market. General opinion reckons that annual growth in hardware sales in Spain has already stabilised at 10% to 15% whilst software figures for 1988 should show an increase of 30% to 40% in over those for 1987 with the services sector also growing at between 20% and 25%. The strong demand for software comes, like everywhere, with the increasingly close relationship between computers and telecommunications, the growing need of companies for more complex computer systems to run their businesses effectively, and, more specifically, with the personal computer boom which has led to a demand for more specialised and complete solutions. Unfortunately, however, Spain is still suffering from a prejudice against business following the country’s political upheavals last decade, and an inherent risk-averse attitude to equity investment. Of Spain’s 1,500 software companies that have average turnover in the range of $80,000 to $170,000, only 400 companies turn over more than $850,000, whilst only 50 turn over more than $8.5m, and most of that comes from hardware. Finally, out of the 10 biggest software companies in the market, only four are majority Spanish owned: Entel SA, Logic Control SA, Ibermatica SA and Eria SA. The country’s National Electronic & Computer Project is now supporting very small businesses, however, which has reduced the cost of starting up a business or project, but it has still been criticised for lumping the computer and electronic sectors together. Florenci Bach, president of Sedisi (the Association of Spanish Computer Companies) thinks that Spain should now follow France’s example of 10 years ago. That is, it should first support the computer services companies, then packaged software development and marketing companies and finally bespoke application software houses. The aim now is for the 60,000 companies working in the computer sector in Spain to capitalise on the wide diversity in the software sector, especially in application software, engineering software, and packages, which unlike core operating software are not overwhelmingly the province of IBM and other multinationals – indeed IBM has proved very weak in personal computer software.
