IT Industry's Share Rises
IT players accounted for 63.3 percent of the top 30 companies' combined market capitalization in 2020, Korea Exchange said on Jan. 12. The share rose from 25.4 percent in 2000.
Korea's IT industry includes service companies such as Naver and Kakao, and electric and electronics companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
The percentage of IT companies’ market cap in major countries ballooned in the late 1990s but crashed with the collapse of IT bubbles between 2001 and 2002. However, Korea saw a sharp increase in IT companies’ share again as IT and high-tech manufacturing industries became the nation’s mainstream industries.
Financial companies’ market capitalization share gradually contracted in advanced countries. But China deviated from the trend. Financial companies' share shrank in Korea (12.4 percent → 6.2 percent), the United States (17.0 percent → 7.4 percent) and Germany (25.6 percent → 12.1 percent) but grew in China (16.1 percent → 24.5 percent).
Of note is the rapid growth of the pharmaceutical industry and a significant increase in healthcare companies’ share in market capitalization in major countries. In 2000, there were no healthcare companies in the top 30 market cap leaders in Korea, but the percentage stood at 7.8 percent in 2020. The same went for Germany (5.1 percent → 16.4 percent), Japan (4.1 percent → 13.5 percent), and China (0.0 percent → 10.0 percent).
However, in the United States, the proportion of healthcare companies plummeted from 17.8 percent to 5.9 percent as the size of IT and consumer goods industries such as Apple, Amazon and eBay have increased, Korea Exchange explained.