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Finnish software businesses confident of very bright future
on international market
More than 64% of software entrepreneurs think that prospects
for their businesses are better than a year ago. They think
their companies' turnover will rise by almost 70 per cent
this year. The growth is expected to come mainly from the
international market. The sector also believes that the number
of those employed by the companies will increase: the average
size of a company is expected to go up from 17 employees to
21.
The top specialists in the software field focus on their
core know-how, producing precise solutions for the needs of
narrowly defined sectors. Software customized in very fine
detail for customers' needs is produced for sales and distribution
data systems, user identification by mobile phone and on-line
billing.
Digia produces top-class result
In spite of the difficult times faced by the mobile phone
sector, the Finnish company Digia Oy is doing better than
ever. The company designs software based on the Symbian OS
(operating system) on a worldwide scale. The company recorded
strong growth in 2002, the turnover for the accounting year
being 12.4 million euros, an enormous increase of 92 per cent
compared with the previous year.
The company's success is based on strong know-how in the
development of the Nokia Series 60 Platform, which is a software
product for the smartphone that Nokia licenses to other mobile-handset
manufacturers. The Series 60 Platform includes mobile browsing,
multimedia messaging and content downloading as well as a
host of personal information management and telephony applications.
The Series 60 Platform is licensed by Nokia, Panasonic Mobile
Communications, Samsung, Sendo and Siemens.
In the near future the company will continue to focus on
the Symbian-related business activities by taking more comprehensive
responsibility for software solutions when creating new Symbian
OS based-mobile phones for leading phone manufacturers.
BasWare - considerable growth in financial administration
software
BasWare Oyj, a software company that is publicly quoted on
the Helsinki Stock Exchange and operates on the international
market, is also producing first-class results. This innovative
company develops ready-made software for electronic business
operations and financial management and markets it worldwide.
The Group has subsidiaries in Germany, the UK and the USA.
BasWare Oyj's software is used by more than a thousand organizations
in various business sectors both in public management and
the private sector. The company has achieved the position
of market leader in software for electronic business in Scandinavia
and for financial management software in Finland.
BasWare Oyj's turnover in 2002 was 20.3 million euros, an
increase of more than 70% compared with the previous year.
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There are some 900 software product companies in Finland.
Their combined turnover in 2001 was about 900 million
euros. The average annual growth of the turnover in
the sector between 1997 and 2001 was 49%. In spite of
the increasingly difficult market situation, the total
turnover in the sector went up by a further 16% in 2001.
The international market accounted for 46% of this and
its growth was 19%.
The sector employs more than 10,000 people directly
and 30,000 people indirectly. The software product industry
is a rapidly developing field in Finland which at the
end of this decade may reach a total turnover of more
than 10 billion euros.
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>> www.digia.com
>>
www.basware.com
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