The Intersection of Microsoft, Linux, and China

at_$tephen writes "Fortune magazine has an article stressing the Chinese market's importance to Microsoft's long term strategy, and touching on Linux's involvement in the Chinese market. In the early days of Microsoft rampant piracy helped establish it as the de facto standard in PCs despite good alternatives. History may be unfolding again here, with the exception that having the Chinese government as an ally has huge additional benefits. Or perhaps Gates has met his match with the Chinese government. 'In another boost for Microsoft, the government last year required local PC manufacturers to load legal software on their computers. Lenovo, the market leader, had been shipping as few as 10% of its PCs that way, and even US PC makers in China were selling many machines "naked." Another mandate requires gradual legalization of the millions of computers in state-owned enterprises. In all, Gates says, the number of new machines shipped with legal software nationwide has risen from about 20% to more than 40% in the past 18 months.'"

RTFA

[spellraiser]

If you read the article, you will see that forcing businesses to pay is what Microsoft started off by doing, quite unsuccessfully. Their usual heavy-handed strategy of suing businesses for pirating their software failed miserably, as the Chinese courts were not sympathetic towards Microsoft.

So, they finally changed their tactics, dropping prices dramatically. That's why they're finally making some headway in China. Oh, and some very active government lobbying seems to have played a big part as well. Microsoft seems to be best buddies with the Chinese government now, making deals with them, selling them software in huge quantities ...

Gotta love free enterprise. Corporations don't care where the money comes from; this is proved time and again by Western corporations sucking up to the Chinese government.

Re:Good

[Penguinisto]

A clumsy delivery, but there is one valid question in there.

As for why I care (dunno ab't the oth3r guy)? Well...

1. it means spending more time on the phone with relatives and friends talking about stuff that doesn't involve the phrase: "Oh, hey, while you're here, can you help me? my computer has been acting up lately..."
2. at work, less money shoveled at MSFT licensing and other useless costs means more cash that can be put towards my salary.
3. less downtime @ work too.
4. watching Symantec go Chapter 11 would be delicious
5. seeing MSFT actually pay attention to the average and small customers again would be pretty cool

Just a short list; I'm sure others can happily add to it.

HTH,

/P

hmm.

[apodyopsis]

when I was in China I frequently had market sellers attempting to sell me dodgy DVDs and CDs for 2 or 3 Yuan.

But I don't think they had windows on them...... yikes!

Seriously though, even in the large multinational Shenzhen office I was in the IT support guy installed windows of a shiny gold disc - it was just how things were done there. The serial number was written on the top in black pen. I guess product activation and WGA make it more difficult for this to work so they crawl back to the conference table and talk.

BTW. Many of the top executives from another multinational always impressed me by running Yellow Dog on a USB stick - I'm not even sure their laptops even had software on - but the USB sticks were on their key rings. I always thought that was a neat security idea. I have never seen that done anywhere else.

Re:Alternatives NOT GOOD ENOUGH

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in it's day DR-DOS was far better than MS-DOS was (even admitted by Microsoft employees). Anyway, it "somehow" failed to win. Why? I will let it to you as an execise (hint: .
The lesson to learn is: in the free market, Beta doesn't always win over VHS. In fact it looks like it's like 50/50 or something like that. Or put another way, the free market sucks selecting the best technology. The cause seems to be the myriad of other factors, specially *human* factors when there's an small group of people making decisions.

Re:Silly Government, Kids know Tricks

[ChrisA90278]

"Just install Windows over" does not work. Most end users are not technically competent to install Windows on a PC. They want the machine to work out of the box. People who sell PCs and don't supply a mchine that works out of the box will be selling into only a small specialt market