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Israel's Reborn Tech Boom

(Business Week) Neal Sandler - For Israel's high-tech industry, it's beginning to look a lot like the 1990s. Demand for high-tech workers is up almost 19% this year, foreign investment rose sharply in 2005, and exports continue to climb. The number of new startups rose for a second year in a row. Economic recoveries in the U.S., Western Europe, and the Far East have sparked an upturn in demand, with 85% of the local high-tech industry's production earmarked for foreign markets. Israeli civilian high-tech exports rose by nearly 10% in 2005, to $16.6 billion, representing nearly half of Israel's industrial exports, the highest percentage anywhere in the world. In 2005, local and foreign venture-capital funds plowed $1.5 billion into new ventures in communications, software, the Internet, and life sciences. Foreign investment totaled $6.8 billion in the first three quarters of 2005. On Dec. 1, Intel announced that it was building a $3.5 billion chip plant in Israel, the largest investment ever by an industrial company in Israel. Israel was responsible for the development of Intel's Centrino mobile technology that powers millions of laptops. Other big names in high tech - including Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Vishay Intertechnology, IBM, and Siemens - have all announced large-scale investments or have acquired Israeli startups in recent months. Most projections are for Israel's economy to grow by more than 5% in 2006.
2005-12-23 00:00:00
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