India down, Europe up?

"The hype over increasing services offshoring to India notwithstanding, the number of investments in R&D/services projects in India actually registered a significant decline last year. India attracted 204 such investments in 2005, as compared to 256 in 2004 — a decrease of close to 20%."

At first I was intrigued so I went on to read - it could mean afterall that R&D is not going well in India or China. On the other hand, the large services providers of India are fairing very well, so what is going on?

"As a result, Europe regained from Asia its top position in 2005, attracting 39% of all projects. Asia attracted 31% of all projects. In 2004, both regions tied at 35%."

I was even more surprised by this one - Europe of all places gaining projects from Asia. Reading further it becomes obvious that there is a lot of growth in Europe, in countries like Romania, Poland etc. This explains Europe's numbers. This also points to something that makes a lot of sense, that R&D projects are very much at home in countries where the engineering background is strong, and Romania surely fits the bill there.