Microsoft To Invest Heavily In China

abb_road writes "As part of Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent visit to Redmond, Microsoft is announcing plans to invest $900 million dollars directly in software and hardware companies in China. The announced goal of this investment is to reduce software piracy and establish Windows-dominance in the region; what's not clear is if they expect the reduction to come from local business pressure or more direct government intervention." From the article: "To now, Microsoft's investment efforts have made little headway in reducing piracy. The company should be booking about $1 billion on annual sales of some 20 million PCs in China, says Paul DeGroot, an analyst at consultancy Directions on Microsoft. Instead, sales there are about $100 million, he says."

Comments

One question

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you say "Business Software Alliance" in Chinese? Will they get to use tanks?

Up pops Clippy the hand Office Assistant!

[gowen]

"It looks like you're selling out your last few moral principles, in order to make a shitload of money from an oppressive totalitarian regime.
  Would you like some assistance?"

Re:Combat piracy??

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I think that when you compare incomes in terms of hours-worked per bags-of-groceries, that the $1 the average Chinese is paying, that it is equivalent to the $18 the average U.S. citizen is paying.

I'm not saying that the piracy is OK, but that the amount paid isn't so cheap as it sounds to us.