Irish e-learning Company wins major deal with Chinese Government

The importance of China as a new emerging technology market was highlighted last week with the announcement that Irish e-learning company ThirdForce has won a major deal with the Chinese Government that will see International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) training made available to a potential market of more than 346 million people – some 26pc of China’s 1.3 billion population. China is widely expected to become the world’s largest ICDL market.

If the programme in China follows a similar growth trajectory to that in the UK, for example, it has the potential to attract 26 million participants by 2010.

The success of Irish companies in construction and infrastructure projects are well documented. This is no small part to the trade delegations that visit China every few months. Doing business in China is all about establishing personal relationships, the concept of tele sales conference and phone calls are not rated very highly.