The US is the best environment in which to host an IT company, according to a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, despite recent concerns over immigration. 

America came top overall in a ranking of global IT competitiveness designed to measure the degree to which a country is equipped to support an IT industry.

Japan took second place, followed by South Korea, the UK and Australia.

The study gauged factors such as technological infrastructure, quality of training, support for innovation and intellectual property rights.

The US was the only country to rank in the top five in all categories, coming first in protection of intellectual property rights and in the quality of IT training and development.

Kim Thomas, the study's author, noted that none of the top countries was without weaknesses, and that the rankings could easily shift.

The US and the UK lagged behind in research and development, for example. The US posted a score of 39.8 and the UK 23.2 in comparison to Japan's score of 84.3 and Korea's 56.6 in this category.

The UK also lost points in IT infrastructure, trailing countries such as Switzerland, Canada, The Netherlands and Australia. IT infrastructure includes criteria such as broadband penetration and quality of internet security. 

• Economist Intelligence Unit report: The means to compete: benchmarking IT industry competitiveness (PDF)