The internet's impact on the language industry: The opportunity for the Asia-Pacific markets

Summary form only given. Asia has had phenomenal success in providing outsourced product and application development services in recent years, but challenging economic conditions now require them to deliver more integrated offerings that respond to customer demands. Until now, outsourced development and localization services have generally been treated as separate issues, with localization largely handled within the narrow domains of single countries by companies that lack a full global perspective. At the same time, global product development outsourcers have often not fully understood localization issues or not been fully prepared to properly address globalization requirements. This decoupling within outsourced development has had a negative impact on quality and responsiveness from both sides. Currently, there are huge untapped opportunities for the outsourcing of globalization services within Asia that would allow development companies in Greater China to offer more value and better cost structures to their clients. No single country, however, has all of the resources to adequately deal with all of Asia. To achieve the integration that is needed, localization service providers must globalize their businesses, while outsourced global product development providers must move to localize their offerings to provide globalization services via partners to their clients.