Posted on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 7:14 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Earlier this week Microsoft stated it
expects sales of its products will rise by more than 20% in China.
Responding to complaints by Western governments and companies, as well as criticism from a growing field of domestic firms, China has been clamping down on piracy over the last two years to the benefit of software makers such as Microsoft.
As part of the campaign, most of the nation's top domestic PC sellers, including Lenovo and Founder, have pushed to boost their number of PCs sold with legal copies of Microsoft's Windows operating systems already installed.
Other major foreign players in the market, including global leaders Hewlett-Packard and Dell, are pushing similar policies in China.
Reflecting the trend, only about 30 percent of Lenovo PCs now being sold will ultimately contain pirated Windows systems, down sharply from 90 percent last year, said Timothy Chen, chief executive officer of Microsoft's greater China region.
"We've made great progress there," he told Reuters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. China is the world's second-largest PC market by unit sales, with more than 20 million units shipped last year, according to data tracking firm IDC.
