Industry geared for export

摘要

Israel's sometimes world-class telecoms and IT companies are nothing if not focussed on the export market. Figures from the Israel Association of Electronics and Information Industries suggest that total 2001 sales for the sector were US$14.25bn, of which US$11.75bn were export sales. However, these figures include defence systems and industrial and medical systems (together accounting for 32.7% of total sales). For communications equipment alone, published figures for 1999 have total sales of US$3.64bn, of which US$3.12bn was exported. There's an obvious reason for this emphasis on foreign sales. In world terms the local opportunity is fairly modest. As one indicator, the IDC market research concern calculates that the total Israeli services market, fixed and mobile, was worth US$4.475bn in 2001, while data services in the same year clocked up revenues of US$324m.