Low-code opens door for foreign tech companies

China's fast-growing low-code market is opening the door for foreign technology companies to expand as more Chinese companies are eager to embrace digital transformation for more rapid growth, said a senior company executive.

"The importance of the Chinese market is undeniable for us with its leading economic position worldwide. It has become more important, thanks to its huge and continuously rising number of developers in need of low-code," said Tim Srock, CEO of Mendix, also known as Siemens Low-Code, a low-code solution provider.

Low-code is a key software technology that needs little or no coding to build applications and processes. Low-code development platforms offer a development environment used to create application software through a graphical user interface. It is essential for enterprises to drive digitalization.

"Such a forefront technology is more popular in China than in many foreign countries, as 85 percent of the country's IT leaders said they are actively embracing low-code technology. But globally, only 72 percent believe so," he said.

Based on the company's low-code report, although the United States still ranked first, the Chinese market is expected to quickly overtake the US as the global leader in low-code adoption.

"For multinational companies, a government's attitude towards emerging tech and innovations really matters," Srock said. "The Chinese government has put digitalization into a high strategic position and mentioned it several times in the government work report, which has become a great driving force for our company."

Currently, China is the largest market for Siemens Low-Code in the Asia-Pacific region, and the company aims to make it a global top-ranked market by 2025, Srock said.

According to market consultancy iResearch, China's low-code market will grow at a compound rate of nearly 50 percent each year to hit 13.1 billion yuan ($1.90 billion) by 2025. Acumen Research and Consulting also noted that the Asia-Pacific region will be the fastest-growing market globally by 2030.

According to Srock, banking and financial services, insurance, manufacturing, retail and government affairs are the top priorities for Siemens Low-Code's businesses in China.

"We aim to help Chinese companies adopt digitalization quickly and agilely, to make them different and advanced," he said.

When it comes to challenges ahead, Srock said that the Chinese low-code market is highly fragmented. Therefore, the company cooperates with Tencent Cloud to promote localization and strives to develop more solutions that are suitable for the Chinese market.

Ning Wei, a low-code researcher from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank, said: "Many Chinese are using low-code to serve fragmented and temporary needs. More efforts are needed to use low-code to support more of the core demands of businesses and drive 'real digitalization'."