A lire sur: http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/french-software-industry-has-competitive-advantages-marketing-weaknesses_424834
France’s software development sector has
been showing strong, sustained growth, but it is still not well
structured to meet the challenge of breaking into new markets in Europe
and worldwide.
At the third ‘Top 250’ French Software Publishers and Developers evening
hosted by sector federation Syntec Numérique in Paris on 15 October,
multinational professional services firm Ernst & Young presented a report
including observations and forecasts for the French software market.
The main conclusion is very clear-cut: French software development
companies are doing well, even extremely well, judging by how the market
has expanded since 2010. With accumulated turnover of a little over €8
billion and an increase of 10% in jobs created since 2011, software
development is showing a strong hand during an economic period when many
other sectors of the French economy have been hard hit. On top of the
actual volume increase, the speed of progress is something that should
give French software publishers a lot of confidence. Turnover has risen
by an accumulated 12% since 2011, and since 2010 there has been an
overall increase of more than 20%. Software development now accounts for
over 50,000 jobs, a figure which should continue to swell in the coming
years, given that 70% of the firms polled by EY said they were planning
to recruit.
Growth varies according to sub-sector
‘Horizontal’ providers – i.e. software publishers and
developers that produce general software which can theoretically be
applied to any activity – are doing well, showing an accumulated
increase of 15% in turnover since 2010, but it is the specialised,
business-oriented firms and the video games developers that are driving
the main growth in the French software sector, with growth of close to
23%. Moreover a closer look at the figures reveals not only fairly
strict segmentation among companies but also a real imbalance within the
sector. Among the top 250 attending the event, there were a couple of
industry giants who come out top in terms of both size and
profitability: namely 3D design software company Dassault Systèmes in
the specific business solutions category; and video game publisher and
developer Ubisoft in the games and mass market software category. Both
these companies achieved turnover more than five times greater than the
number two firm in their respective categories. Among the business-based
solutions providers, totalling 175 well-known developers, and the games
publishers – numbering 18 – there is a high concentration of business
with the sub-sector leaders. Overall, only 5% of the development firms
account for 60% of the software produced in these various markets.
Investing strongly in the future
Growth in France’s software development industry has gone
hand-in-hand with a consistent policy of investing in the future of the
industry. In 2012 close to a quarter of all sector employees were
working in Research and Development, with a budget of over a billion
euros. The main barrier to growth for French software developers is
certainly not a lack of dynamism. It is rather, according to Olivier
Ezratty, an innovation strategy advisor, due to a failure to
internationalise and get into foreign markets. Foreign business is
growing, accounting for 20 - 60% of turnover, depending on the company.
However, the industry in France is highly fragmented and still too
reliant on a few leading firms. “The software development sector in
France is a bipolar industry, with a huge amount of technical expertise,
but seriously lacking in the marketing and sales skills to exploit its
full potential,” argues Olivier Ezratty.
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