Toronto has the largest concentration of private Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) facilities in Canada, topping Montreal and Ottawa, and ranks third in North America after San Francisco and New York, according to a recent study.
Entitled ‘The Information and Communications Technologies Industry in the Toronto Region’, the study indicates that ICT employs about 148,000 people in over 3,300 Toronto-area facilities. Annual sales for these firms are over $32.5 billion and they provide more than $6.2 billion in annual exports.
Over 50 percent of all ICT companies in the Greater Toronto Area are located in the city of Toronto itself. These include 95 manufacturing facilities, 386 systems development facilities, 322 software development facilities and 412 service facilities. Four hundred and seventy were not classified.
Toronto is strong in many areas, including manufacturing and software and systems development. It has several leading industries, including electronic components manufacturing, and computer and communications equipment manufacturing.
“The world’s leading high tech companies are drawn to Toronto,” said Mayor David Miller at the presentation of the findings. He noted that 65 percent of ICT firms plan to invest this year in their Toronto region operations.
Almost 90 percent of ICT firms expect to grow at least as fast as the economy in the next five years, Miller reported, 39 percent of which expect to grow faster.
Commissioned by The City of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, the study was conducted by E & B Data Inc. of Montreal.