Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, was once second only to the United States in software sales, with its embedded software capabilities prominent. Independent research institutions even rank Japan well above the United States in terms of software quality and productivity. However, Japanese software products and services still lack a global presence, mainly because of the huge gap between strong software IS215ACLEH1AB development process capabilities and weak product innovation capabilities.

Michael Cusumano calls this contradiction “the myth of the Japanese software industry”. Japanese IT companies are mostly located in less software-intensive industries. The reason for the US software industry’s superiority over Japan is the US first mover advantage, which was driven by the US research and development policy and the leading development of computer science education at the university level, which continues to this day. For example, one in five software developers in the IS215ACLEH1AB United States has graduate education, compared with only one in 10 in Japan. The gap is even wider when it comes to PHDS. But it is worth mentioning that the global software outsourcing market is worth $100 billion, and Japan alone accounts for a tenth of it.

Although Japan does not have a thriving, full-fledged industrial software industry, it has made good progress in some areas of software. Japanese companies focus on the development of embedded software. For example, CNC machine tools, intelligent robots and automobiles are the three major carriers of embedded software in Japan.

In fact, almost all devices with digital interfaces in Japan, such as watches, microwave ovens, mobile phones, digital TVS, cars, etc., use embedded systems, and embedded software covers a wide range of fields. So, that’s enough for Japan to dominate the world IS215ACLEH1AB in tiny, sophisticated electronics for decades. However, the development of abnormal industrial software system is unable to escort the Japanese manufacturing industry for a long time, so this is also the reason why the Japanese manufacturing industry has shown a significant decline in recent years.