DCI Eyes US$400Mln Revenues in 2010

 

DCI is a new concept and there is no common definition for it. In general, DCI is a design, production, publishing, storage, distribution and publication industry of digital content products and related services like information lookup, digital entertainment, online healthcare and online learning. DCI products comprise of digital documents, data, pictures, sounds and others. They are stored and transmitted on the electronic media like Internet, telecommunication network, radio and television.

In other words, DCI products are integration of various forms – mixture of many forms of documents, pictures and sounds. It is easy to store, access, reproduce, upgrade and correct these products. Common products in Vietnam are ringing tones and logos for cell-phones, online games, TOEFL exam preparations and online business registration.

According to Mr. Nguyen Trong Duong of the Information Technology Industry under the MPT, intellectual property and creativity are core assets of DCI. Besides, the information content and display method play a decisive role in product value while technology infrastructure, especially bandwidth infrastructure, holds a key role in the development of this industry.

Markcom Group, a consulting firm, had a study on DCI. Mr. Nguyen Thanh Luu, Chief Executive Officer of Markcom Group, showed that in the 1970s and 1980s, hardware held the leading role but not is replaced by software. He affirmed that in the next decade, DCI will keep the leading role. He said, if Vietnam wants to develop this industry, it must quantify its competitiveness against the world. As regards this issue, Mr. Brenden Jacobson, representative of Motorola Inc., said, the United States and other countries strongly develop e-education and e-commerce fields because they think these fields are important and necessary. However, each government has a different development policy.

 

Vietnam now has some 10,000 people engaged in DCI. Mr. Duong said, unlike human resources for software industry, the human resources for DCI comprise of three factors: technology, business and art. However, a university in Vietnam just teaches one of three factors while the country is in need of DCI training course and drilling courses. Representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology have proposed MPT to open short-termed training courses on CIO, IT management or human resources for DCI.

 

He also said that the legal environment from DCI is now insufficient. Although the Government has issued several documents on management and opening of information websites and e-contents, they are insufficient and have many deficiencies. The shortage of legal corridors causes unanswerable problems. For example, Vietnam lacks clear regulations on partial copyright violations. People don’t know whether they violate the intellectual property law when they copy are a part of software source code. The IT circle hopes the Intellectual Property Law, which takes effect on July 1, 2006, will remove all existing shortcomings.

 

However, Vietnam’s DCI cannot remain out of the world trend. At present, Vietnam is developing six DCI fields, namely e-education, online games, Internet content development, mobile network content development, e-library and digital film (multimedia products). Of the six fields, e-education lacks sound orientations to increase its presence. Nonetheless, more than 50 Vietnamese enterprises have to date registered to produce and trade e-learning products and there are some 30 website providing education services.

 

Understanding the importance and advantage of DCI development, MPT is directing Vietnamese IT enterprises to focus on this industry. In the draft programme on DCI development until 2010, MPT targets to uphold an average annual growth rate of 50 per cent and the industry will reach US$400 million revenues in 2010. Also by 2010, Vietnam will have 30,000 DCI experts and will reduce copyright violation rate to the average level in the region.

 

In 2001, IDC (International Data Corporation) forecasted the global DCI revenues reached US$75 billion and US$420 billion in 2010. However, according to PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), the global DCI revenues reached US$172 billion in 2002 and will jump to US$430 billion in 2006 with an average annual growth of 30 per cent.