SAN FRANCISCO, April 23: American Information Technology (IT) experts predict that the Indo-Chinese alliance could hasten the region’s emergence as an IT powerhouse and centre of innovation.

Some US IT experts believe that the Indo-Chinese cooperation is likely to reduce US leverage in the region because the trade between the countries would be larger than each country’s trade with the United States.

Speaking at Tata Consultancy Services’ headquarters during his recent visit to India’s Bangalore technology hub, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao envisioned an alliance in which China concentrates on hardware and India on software and services. “We will be able to lead the world’s IT industry,” Wen said, predicting “the coming of the Asian century of the IT industry.”

According to C.K. Prahalad, a University of Michigan IT professor, the alliance would translate into enough economic clout for India and China to impose IT standards throughout Asia and greatly influence technology adoption globally. Indo-Chinese cooperation would create real issues for the US as it would reduce US leverage in the region,” Prahalad said.

China currently is choosing standards for radio-frequency identification, encryption, and other key technologies. The US government, prodded by US software developers like Microsoft and big commercial IT users, is urging Beijing to endorse standards already widely used throughout the West.

The impact of collaboration between India and China likely would extend beyond IT services to everything from the PC business to software, US experts believe. Both countries will become a major force in the development of software standards. Because of its low up-front cost, open-source code is used heavily in India and China that will help push its acceptance worldwide, the experts said.

A Sino-Indian alliance could also spawn a non-Western Personal Computer (PC) manufacturer to challenge the dominance of US PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, an IT conference was told.

Indian software developers are welcoming the prospect of easier access to China’s red-hot economy. A number of major Indian IT services companies recently have established operational centres in China.