NEC, Fujitsu to hire more developers in China

JAPANESE electronics conglomerates NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. both plan to increase their number of software developers in China, India and other Asian countries outside Japan to more than 10,000 each over the next three years, the Nikkei business daily reported Saturday.

The mass hiring, which will include NEC boosting staff in China by 75 percent and Fujitsu tripling its engineers in India, is aimed at countering a shortage of developers in Japan, the newspaper said.

Japanese technology companies are behind their global peers in tapping the cheap talent pools of Asia. IBM, for example, employs 53,000 engineers in India while Accenture has 30,000, the Nikkei said.

NEC plans to double its staff of engineers outside Japan to more than 10,000 by 2010. That includes boosting staff in China to 7,000 from 4,000, doubling headcount in India to 2,000 and hiring more in the Philippines and Vietnam, the newspaper said.

Fujitsu plans to double its development staff in China to 2,000 by 2009 and triple staff in India to 10,000 by 2010, the Nikkei said.

Both NEC and Fujitsu plan to tap the new hires to develop software for mobile phones and electronics while keeping basic design development in Japan, the newspaper said.

Japan has about half a million software developers. With corporations increasing investment on information technology, the country is currently thought to be short of about 150,000 developers, the Nikkei said.