How important is localization?
From the beginning of the computer age, the United States has been the leading developer of software. Without any real competition, the corporations did not have to localize their products in order to sell and gain market share. With the mass acceptance and large number of personal computers in the early 1980s, the percentage of software written by non-U.S. companies increased. It created competition which was relatively none existed before. Having coexisted in multilingual environments for centuries, European companies realized long ago the importance of localizing products before computers and software existed. Once they began to develop software, they were aware of the need to make the product available in the languages of the target market. Whereas localization has been a necessity for doing business in Europe, American companies needed to be convinced that their products have to be adapted before launching it to the target markets. The increasing competition of non-American software products in the global market have been pushing North American companies to localize.
