Is software eating Japan? (from my email)

I came across a great series of posts by Richard Katz about Japan and information technology. It shows that software has not eaten Japan (for now?).

Some interesting facts:

– “by 2025, 60% of Japan’s large companies will be operating core systems that are more than 20 years old. Would anyone today use a 2005 PC?”

– ” It is worth noting that the OECD shows Japan suffering an actual drop in output per employee in ICT business services from 2005 through 2021, its ICT productivity having peaked out in 1999. By contrast, Korea’s productivity grew 41% in the same period”

– “Among high school boys, Japan ranks number one in using the Internet to search for information on a particular topic several times a day, and Japan’s girls come in second among OECD girls. Japanese boys also rank number one in single-player online games. On the other hand, these boys score at, or near, the bottom on other activities, such as multi-player online games or uploading their own content”.

– In an OECD study, Japan is third from the bottom when it comes to the share of students ” who foresee having a career, not just in ICT, but in any area of science or engineering” [that was quite shocking to me, to be honest. Positively shocking, on the other hand, was that Portugal leads the pack]

– “What’s even more remarkable is that Japan’s top performers on the math and science tests come in dead last in the share who foresee themselves working in science or engineering”.

– Maybe this provides a bit of an explanation: ” In 2021, the average annual income of a Japanese ICT staffer was just ¥4.38 million ($34,466), down 4% from 2019. That was 2% below the median salary in Japan, whereas in the US and China, ICT salaries are 8-10% above the median.”

sources: https://richardkatz.substack.com/p/2025-digital-cliff-part-i