Intelletual Property Theft – This remains a problem – much more so in China than India. It is a legitimate concern. The light at the end of the tunnel could be the fact that more and more Asian countries are developing their own IP. As they begin to have financial interests in their IP, there is a commensurate increase in IP standards and protections. With India, the prevalence of the IT services industry has ensured stronger protection for IP in that nation than it has in China.

Geographic and Cultural Diversity - Think about the number of languages you encounter when covering Asia Pacific: If you start in Japan and run west to Pakistan, and south to New Zealand, you enter more than a dozen primary languages, let alone many more regional dialects.? In addition to languages, there are dozens of different regulatory environments, logistical setups and infrastructure concerns – managing Asia Pacific is much more difficult than managing the U.S. as one market. Each nation is different from selling to managing to marketing – it is very complex. Software vendors entering the region need to choose their markets very carefully. Finally, the reality of travel in Asia is that one can fly for 14 hours and still be in the same region.

Industry Consolidation – Although software industry consolidation is most visibly a U.S. phenomenon, it has ripple effects which impact Asia. When setting up an early stage software company, you end up competing against software giants – all of whom have pretty significant infrastructure in Asia, not to mention big head starts. Startups have to be really smart about how, where and when to go to market in Asia. It is entirely possible to view one of the mega-vendors (ie, SAP, Oracle, et al) – or a leading, Asian solution provider - as a “distributor” of your solution, and leverage their connections and infrastructure to get your products into Asian markets rapidly, through either collaborative ventures, or (of course) trade sale.