The market share of Xinjiang’s software industry across China was less than 0.2% in 2010. Furthermore, there were a total of 107 software enterprises in Xinjiang at the end of 2010 with combined revenue of about 3.5 billion yuan, compared to a total of 3,500 software companies in Guangdong Province with combined revenue of 386 billion yuan.

Bi Zhonghua, an official at the Xinjiang Software Park Management Committee, has found through research that historical reasons have led to the imbalanced industry structure and backward informatization in the five Central Asian countries. The average per capita computer ownership is low in these countries and only a small portion of people in their major cities has access to the Internet, implying great potential for development.

China’s booming domestic software industry has mainly focused on research and development of software in languages such as English, Japanese and Korean over recent years and is facing relative market saturation, while the market development for the software in languages such as Arabic, Uyghur and Kazakh has lagged far behind that of the popular languages.

The CPC Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region decided to build the Xinjiang Software Park due to the region’s geographical advantages and large market potential. China-Eurasia Expo has offered Asian and European businesspeople an opportunity to learn about the software park.

Bi said that the Xinjiang Software Park targets West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and other markets, and will be a strategic basis for the region’s software and information services industries. The rise of the software industry in Xinjiang will greatly boost the training of technical talent among members of ethnic minorities. The region’s software industry is expected to have a total workforce of 15,000 by 2015.

Many software development companies in Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities have applied for tenancy in the software park since its construction started on June 18.

“There will be about 100 small and medium-sized IT companies and 15 to 20 major software companies in the park by 2013,” Bi said.

In order to attract China and even the world’s top 500 enterprises, the software park will provide separate bases for these important enterprises.