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Taiwan Expands Microsoft Investigation
"The focus of the investigation has shifted to 'constraining competition in the marketplace.' FTC invesigators has visited Microsoft Singapore and will the Microsoft headquarter in the U.S. Because of the experiences of the U.S. and European regulators focusing on Microsoft's monopoly to date with no concrete results, the Taiwan FTC tries a different approach and looks at Microsoft's constraints imposed on software customers. Microsoft has a clever, complex system of international operations, and Taiwan's customers actually obtain licensing rights from Microsoft Singapore. Now this case has become international in scope.
Meanwhile Taiwan's business software users are calling for the FTC to look into the new Microsoft licensing program starting on August 1, which they say is another type of price hike and consumer abuse.
The government is setting targets for national initiatives to increase GNU/Linux use: 50% of computers in the government and schools and 30% in private businesses will run Linux, and there will be a 20-billion-Taiwan dollar (US$ 600 million) Linux industry in Taiwan, in 2006.
To counter all this Microsoft Taiwan is increasing its PR efforts, including numerous donations of computers and 1-dollar (3 US cents) MS software licenses to schools and non-profits. Taiwan MS President stresses that one main task of his company for the next year is to improve Microsoft's image."
All the 'text' in the linked articles seem to be graphics, so the 'fish can't do anything...
They have an English section, but I could find no mention of the articles....
die...
Timothy, is this a joke? Did you read the articles before you posted this?
As for getting a non-graphical version, click the fanti or jianti links.
To counter all this Microsoft Taiwan is increasing its PR efforts, including numerous donations of computers and 1-dollar (3 US cents) MS software licenses to schools and non-profits.
In other news, Taiwanese schools are reporting significant profit from reselling Microsoft licenses.
I think it's high time someone told MS that they can't overcharge ($500 for XP professional, i think) Linux is a superior OS (in my opinion) and certainly at a superior price. Also Mac OS X is a great, and there are many business apps that run on Linux and OS X. Now if only the CONSUMERS would stop hurling there money at MS.
(or should that be babblefish?)
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I think the encoding for Chinese in Babelfish is GB (Guo Biao), a system used in Mainland China for simplified chinese. Traditional chinese, on the other hand, is used by Taiwan, and the encoding for that is in BIG5. Perhaps you may want to find a converter that can translate between the two?
This is my attempt at a translation of the article. I translated it to fit its original style as much as possible. Not edited extensively.
To Investigate Microsoft, Fair-Trade Committee Will Go Overseas for Interviews
(Byline: Reporter Li Li Sing/Taipei Reporting)
The Fair-Trade Committee special taskforce investigating "the allegation of Microsoft monopolises Taiwan software market" has a major development; the target of investigation has shifted from Microsoft Taiwanese branch office to Microsoft Singapore Branch and Microsoft headquarters in the US. The direction of investigation focuses on whether Microsoft Singapore and Taiwanese customers' contracts are involved in the "restriction of competition". The issue of Microsoft's overly-high prices in Taiwan, after Fair-Trade committee interviewed the Singaporean company, will develop into an international case.
Last Friday, the Fair-Trade committee interviewed Microsoft Singapore representative(s) in Taipei; in the short term, it will visit Microsoft American Headquarters. The Fair-Trade committee will provide concrete investigation result earliest September or October.
According to our analysis, the Fair-Trade committee has from the beginning investigated Microsoft products mainly on their "paired sales" behaviour, their abuse of monopoly power (caused Taiwanese Microsoft product prices overly high), etc. So-called "restricted competition" points to fair trading law's notion about corporation using illegitimate restrictive behaviour on their trading partners, classified as a kind of "unfair competition".
As someone points out, the US Microsoft corporation has a rather complicated international organization structure; its trading method is also trans-national, layer-by-layer, indirect. Taiwanese "corporate users" (buying more than 250 PC Microsoft software) reveal that when they buy Microsoft products, they do not deal with Microsoft Taiwan, rather, they are arranged to sign contracts with Microsoft Singapore.
Corporate users say that, in the contracts, Microsoft Singapore limits Taiwanese corporate users from changing dealers without "permission", possibly involving the violation of the Fair-Trade Law's "Restriction of competition" provision. Because of that, the Fair-Trade committee changed its target of investigation, from the original Microsoft Taiwan, to Microsoft Singapore.
After a period of investigation, the Fair-Trade committee in large measure clarified Microsoft's related product sales streams (?Direct translation. I don't know much about marketing terms?). From our analysis, the contracts Microsoft Singapore signs with Taiwanese corporate users clearly specify that the corporate users, when they want to change their dealer, must get permission from the Singaporean company. In private, the corporate users complain that Microsoft has limited their buying rights.
About whether Microsoft is involved in "pair sales", according to the investigation of the Fair-Trade committee, Microsoft's "standard edition" includes Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, priced at $17,590 New Taiwanese Currency. But last June, a single copy of Word software was sold at $11,690, a single copy of Excel was sold at $17,590, a single copy of Powerpoint was sold at $10,590. This pricing method lets vast majority of customers to buy the full suite of the "standard edition", not any one single piece of software.
Some people from the legal profession say that from the investigation direction of the Fair-Trade committee, the monopolization of the Taiwanese software market probably violates Fair-Trade provision's articles 10.1, 10.2, 19, etc.
The Fair-Trade committee investigation of the case of "the involvement of Microsoft in the monopolization of the Taiwan software market" has its main impetus in this May's complaint from (a) legislative representative(s) to the Fair-Trade committee on the overly higher price of Taiwanese Microsoft products than other countries, injuring consumer's rights. The Fair-Trade committee received the complaint and immediately started the investigation; after four months, the Fair-Trade committee has mostly followed through related evidence, and has intensified the investigation activities.
[2002/08/20 United Newspaper]
... but time and chance happeneth to them all.