In January, I predicted that by the end of 2007, there would be a third low-cost-country named alongside China and India when the topic of Low-Cost-Country-Sourcing was discussed. The battle still wages, but there has been chatter of Vietnam emerging from a variety of sources.

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At Duquesne University’s Entrepreneur’s Growth Conference earlier this month (admittedly an forum where sourcing isn’t usually a hot topic), a moderator mentioned that Vietnam was becoming a popular sourcing spot because its government tends to be more vigilant towards intellectual property protection issues than China is. Then eSourcing forum posted that the entire country briefly lost Internet connectivity.

I still believe that Mexico is gaining strength. But I’m also curious about the Philippines.

I called Dell on a support issue this week (which you’ll probably be reading about soon here), and spoke to someone from the Philippines. Now, I understand that Dell pulled all of its B2B support back into the US from India a few years ago, so I find it interesting that they farmed it out again to a LCC and that they chose the Philippines over other options.

It will only get more interesting as time goes on…

(cymbalta)