economic-driving force.

The latest year-by-year analysis of the international indices shows the following: Japan, with regard to ICT infrastructure and technologies where Japan traditionally have been regarded as a leader, has matched by other countries; on the other hand, in the advanced fields such as FTTH, mobile-Internet (including 3G), and IPv6, Japan still holds its advantages; however, with regard to the ICT-utilization, Japan, concerning Internet utilization, is failing to successfully utilize Internet for solving its problems, is showing signs of retreating. In addition, as for the ICT utilization, which has been pointed out as a challenge, Japan is not able to advance in the international rankings, partly because the superiority that Japan has had in the business sectors is eroding as a result of the activities that other countries have taken.

However, it should be pointed out that Japan, having advantages in the mobile-Internet which is globally expected to grow, and possessing a large domestic market with the most skilled and sophisticated consumers around the world and advanced technologies, still has many promising fields of high growth potential.

Because the present severe situations seen in the Japan’s ICT fields are considered to have resulted from the failure to take advantage of Japan’s strengths — for example the lag seen in the ICT utilization, Japan has a chance to overcome those situations and once again lead the other countries by the activities being taken from now.

### 2. Economic ripple-effects of ICT industries

## (1) ICT Industries' Economic Ripple Effects

The sector-by-sector analysis of the economic ripple-effects of ICT industries shows the following: the plus factors reside in the information-services, telecommunication-services, broadcasting services, Internet-related services (Figure 1-3-2-1), the total gains of which exceeds the losses in the hardware industries; for example, while the economic-ripple effects by the hardware industries have been decreasing since the Lehman Shock, the economic ripple-effects of the upper-layer and network-infrastructure layer, have shown gains sufficient to drive the growth of the ICT industries as a whole — particularly, the services related to the ICT upper-layer have a large job-inducement power, which is a side-effect of labor-intensiveness of those businesses.

## (2) Contribution to export and import

The trends in the export coefficient (Figure 1-3-2-2) of a good — the net export, the export surplus over the imports, divided by the sum of the exports and imports — show the following: the decline in the export coefficients, an indicator of the global competitiveness of an industry, has accelerated for ICT-related goods, showing that, from the viewpoint of trade, ICT related goods, particularly image equipment or communication equipment, have been gradually losing their competitiveness.

### 3. Competitiveness of Japan's ICT industries

## (1) Corporate values in ICT industries (stock-market capitalization)

The analysis on the stock-market values of the ICT-related corporations, for the purpose of viewing the status of Japan’s ICT industries, shows the following: the number-ratio of the Japanese ICT-related corporations in the top-100 highest market-capitalization ranking, in the past generally 5 to 10% (except for 2011), declined significantly from 2003 to 2012, which is the evidence of the Japanese ICT corporations’ fall in the top-100 ranking; on the other hand, US corporations such as Apple or Google and Asian corporations such as Samsung, Korea improved their positions in the ranking.

Figure 1-3-2-1 Trends in Economic Ripple-effects of ICT industries

(Source) MIC "Research and Survey on Current State of Information and Telecommunication Industries (2012)"