Azernews.Az

By Trend

Although between 90 and 95 percent of IT infrastructure fall in the category of software and Iranians have very especially high talents in that area, the opportunity to tap domestic know-how is overlooked, an IT specialist says.

“This is while in the field of hardware also we have very high capabilities and are doing one percent of installation and maintenance jobs in our country via domestic technicians,” Mehdi Mirmehdi Komjani, the former chairman of Iran IT Association, told Trend December 15.

He also said that lack of regard to startups by governmental bodies and private companies is a bitter fact in the Iranian IT business.

“We have science-based companies that, if supported, would be able easily to compete with top Western firms.”

A great part of this is because while in most of the world between 10 and 15 percent of the firms' budgets go to R&D, in Iran the percentage is around zero, Komjani noted.

In the meantime, according to official reports on IRINN TV, the national Iranian broadcasting has been able in past years to avoid paying $55 million to foreign companies by using domestic technology to acquire radio and television transmitters.

Last year, government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said science-based industries, IT in particular, are seen as main propellers of Iran’s economy in a 20-year plan.