China's software industry reported a revenue of 343.89 billion yuan (US$45.73 billion) for the first eight months of this year, up 22.9 percent year-on-year, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry.

Of the total revenue, software products accounted for 121.25 billion yuan, up 24.1 percent; system integration made up 84.05 billion yuan, up 18.5 percent; software technological services was 55.81 billion yuan, up 23.9 percent; embedded system software was 74.26 billion yuan, up 24.5 percent; and IC design collected 8.52 billion yuan, up 27.6 percent.

A spokesman of the ministry said this year a series of policies would be promulgated to further encourage the development of software and integrated circuits. Efforts will also be made to foster and regulate domestic software market, and support products with self-owned intellectual property rights through government purchasing.

He said that currently China's software industry lags far behind the international advanced level, with less than six percent of the global software market share, and it even can not match the development of hardware manufacturing in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2007)