Microsoft unveils huge China plans

[OhioChick]

Source: Shanghai Daily

BEIJING, April 23 -- Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, plans to open more campuses and increase the number of researchers in China amid sales loss to piracy in the world's second-biggest computer market.

"We are initiating new campuses in Beijing and Shanghai," Bill Gates, chairman of the United States-based company, said in a speech on Saturday at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia on southern Hainan Island.

"We see us and other major players doing this expansion throughout Asia."

Microsoft is stepping up research operations in a market where about 80 percent of business software is pirated, and more than 90 percent of 1.3 billion people don't own computers, Bloomberg News reported.

Last week, Gates, 51, announced a 3 U.S. dollars software package for students that may help spur sales in emerging countries. "People are interested in China because of the domestic demand," Robert Chiu, head of technology media and telecommunications banking at Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd, said at the forum.



Read more: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-04/23/content_6014028.htm

[Vidar]

1. If anyone can derail the Chinese economic engine, it's microsoft.

[Kolesar]

2. Ummm, ummm

:rofl:

[modrepub]

7. Here, here!

Let China deal with that Vista crap for awhile!

[MrPrax]

3. A Tale of Two Countries

Good for them...

Note the tactic: when elites in China and India negotiate with massive transnational corporations, they manage to get huge discounts on software for their people and a large investment into research and development.

Our elites just give them a tax breaks, praise and celebrity status...

[Zorro]

4. Trap door city

You think Windows has security vulnerabilities now, just wait until Microsoft hands over the keys to the OS to Chinese researchers.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I'd been thinking my next machine would be an Apple.

Now I know it.

[w4rma]

6. Linux for me, as soon as the Linux people make the wireless networking drivers easier to use. (nt)

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Linux isn't sufficiently idiot-proof

to withstand an idiot of my caliber.

[lovuian]

9. I think the joke is going to be on Gates

:rofl: