Information technology alone represents $112 billion, 4.5% of Brazil's GDP and the seventh largest market globally.
Boosted by strong government incentives, Brazil's high-tech industry is showing solid domestic growth but experts say the country's startup entrepreneurs must go global and shun copycat solutions.
The national Web market is booming, Internet penetration has been doubling over the past four years and consumers are keen to try out new services particularly ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Rio summer Olympics, experts say.
More than 83 million of Brazil's 194 million people have access to the Internet, according to the latest data from the pollster Ibope Nielsen Online.
"Information technology alone represents $112 billion, 4.5% of Brazil's GDP and the seventh largest market globally," said Sergio Pessoa, an executive of the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication (BRASSCOM). "We had 11% growth last year.”
The IT boom is luring a lot of foreign firms to Brazil's 74 tech parks, including the Rio area where oil-related technology is in high demand to tap the huge deep-water oil reserves.
The so-called "pre-salt" reserves off Rio de Janeiro state could hold more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable crude and could turn Brazil into one of the world's top exporters, according to authorities.
