Huawei & ZTE top China's modest software sector

If you’re worried that your industry is about to be overrun by Chinese competitors, you’re definitely not in software.

Chinese biggest software firms are in fact its largest ICT manufacturers Huawei and ZTE.

The Shenzhen-based rivals topped the Ministry for Industry and Information Technology’s annual software “top 100” list, followed by Hong Kong-listed software and services firm Digital China and consumer appliance outfit Haier.

By the gargantuan standards of the Chinese economy, the sector is a modest one. The 100 companies generated software income of 373.5 billion yuan ($57.7b) over the last year. That’s up 27.65% over last year, but still barely more than Microsoft’s sales over the last three quarters.

Huawei clocked up 8.27 billion yuan in software revenue, Sina reported. It’s not clear report when those sales were made, but by comparison Huawei’s total 2010 revenue  was 185 billion yuan ($28.6bn).

Announcing the awards, MIIT vice-minister Yang Xueshan said the software sector should accelerate spending on R&D and create an industry with scale that could achieve high profits. In other words, the China formula for every hi-tech industry.

Beijing-based Founder, Lianchuang, Inspur, Insigma, Tsinghua Tongfang and Neusoft rounded out the top ten list.