MANILA, Philippines--Despite competing low-cost locations, the Philippines will remain a top choice for outsourcers, industry analyst Everest Group said Monday.

The Philippines still offers one of the largest pools of English-speaking workers, said Everest Group chief executive Peter Bendor-Samuel during a presentation at the first day of the eServices conference here.

"There are many low cost locations out there but there aren't many with a large pool of English-speaking talent," Bendor-Samuel added.

He mentioned countries like China and Brazil, hyped as low-cost outsourcing destinations yet inferior to the Philippines in terms of English fluency.

The language advantage is seen to favor the Philippines further as outsourcing expands into more areas other than today's call centers and software-related services.

"Future growth will largely be in non-voice," Bendor-Samuel said. "Work involved will be increasingly industry specific and will involve much more complicated areas," he said.

A trend towards consolidation by outsourcers in terms of location also favors the Philippines, he added.

He acknowledged, though, that labor arbitrage is increasing every year, which means the total cost becomes higher for outsourcers as wage levels increase.

"But the issue is sometimes exaggerated," he said, noting it is still 30 to 40 percent cheaper for companies to outsource offshore.

Currently, he said there is much more significant market opportunity as companies are looking to migrate as much as 30 percent of their services offshore.

"There is clearly a pent-up demand as companies look to generate more savings," he said.