Steve Ballmer does not think China important

In Australia, where this is being written today, Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, the global head of Microsoft, dismissed China’s importance to Microsoft. He said it was due to the Government’s failure to curb rampant software piracy.

Speaking at a luncheon Steve Ballmer said Microsoft wasn’t interested in the Chinese PC market despite recently predicting it would soon become the world’s largest.

He said, ‘China’s not really very important to our business right now. I’d like it to be but it’s not because of the high rate of piracy of intellectual property. We need some IP reform in China for it to be important to our financial results.

‘China is the second largest consumption market for PCs. There’ll be 48 million PCs bought in China this year and that compares to say 4.5 million in Australia.’

And then, to finish off his act, he wandered into the beam and crashed the first demonstration of a high-speed download mobile device, which stalled in front of hundreds of media, analysts and shareholders. It stalled when Steve Ballmer was said to have obstructed the modem transferring the information. Luckily, it did not display a black screen.

Suggestions that he would have been better fitted to a career in the Diplomatic Corps should be ignored.
Source: The Australian

Craig Mundie of Microsoft China

Microsoft, still not out of the woods yet on its idiotic nonsense with black screens, is expecting its Beijing research center to start producing breakthroughs that could lead to global products in health care and other areas.

Microsoft says its Beijing center, one of six, already has exceeded expectations, producing 260 innovations that have been added to products sold worldwide. The center is Microsoft’s biggest outside the United States, with 350 researchers.

Craig Mundie, the company’s chief research officer, said, ‘They are increasingly poised to produce technical breakthroughs that may in fact be the basis of a whole new business for the company.’

More HERE.
Source: AP

Not celebrating the Black Screen move

When Microsoft noticed ‘misunderstandings’ among the Chinese public over its ‘black screen’ move to crack down on piracy, the country’s domestic software industry saw opportunity and couldn’t wait to embrace it.

A Kingsoft public relations manager said in Beijing there were currently up to 120,000 daily Internet downloads of WPS Office, the Microsoft Office-like software developed by Kingsof, compared with 50,000 to 60,000 downloads before the controversial Microsoft move.

Reject black screen, say ‘no’ to the threat, read an online advert inserted into WPS Office. It was evident Kingsoft seemed to expect a lot from this ‘opportunity.’

A sohu.com survey showed 43.58% of 144,133 people surveyed said they would not buy genuine software despite the black screen move.

Another 34.78% said they would try to seek free code keys to unlock the program.

Another survey at sina.com.cn showed 87.43% cent of therespondents, or 132,108 people, said the program would put them off buying genuine Microsoft products.
Much more on this HERE.
Source: Sify

IBM acquires Hisense

IBM has announced an alliance with Hisense TransTech, a leading provider of urban traffic, public transportation and logistics management solutions in China.

IBM has taken an approximate 20% stake in HTT, a subsidiary of the Hisense Group Corporation that specializes in Intelligent Traffic Management Services (ITS), Telecommunications Infrastructure Services (TIS), Business Process Outsourcing Services (BPO), and related software applications.

This investment will facilitate cooperation between HTT and IBM, enabling HTT to offer its clients solutions built on advanced technologies and products and world-class Application Management Services (AMS) while strengthening IBM’s traffic management capabilities.

IBM currently is assisting such cities as London, Stockholm, Singapore and Brisbane to meet traffic management and congestion challenges.

IBM has established a global team of professionals working on a range of technologies and solutions, including researching, testing and developing new Intelligent Transport system management capabilities.
Source: Press Release Point

Trony solutions

Intel’s venture-capital unit doesn’t plan to slow its activity in China despite the global crisis, company executives said as the fund announced three new investments in the country.

Cadol Cheung, managing director of the Asia and Pacific region for Intel Capital, said, “We believe a company with innovative technology will survive to be successful after the crisis is over.”

Echoing that sentiment, Intel President and Chief Executive Paul Otellini said at the media briefing that the global economic crisis will ‘not change our investment profile. I would expect to continue all our investments that we have committed to in China and elsewhere around the world.’

Intel Capital will invest $20 million in Shenzhen-based Trony Solar Holdings, a maker of thin-film solar-power equipment. Intel Capital said it also signed agreements to invest in NP Holdings, a maker of storage systems for renewable energy, and Viewhigh Technologies, a maker of health-care-related software. Intel didn’t provide financial details of those two investments.

Intel Capital’s second China Technology Fund was set up in April with $500 million to invest in Chinese start-ups. The first China Technology Fund was set up in June 2005 with $200 million, all of which was fully invested in Chinese companies.
Source:  Wall Street Journal

Drug store

Earlier this year NW Tech Capital sent a delegation to China to seek out merger and acquisition opportunities. Formerly known as Cybertel Capital Corp, NWTT is a technology base provider to national and regional businesses and other consumers in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

On its site it states: Our Mission Statement is to become the leader in voice and data telecom products and services in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Now NW Tech Capital, apparently ignoring its mission statement, has increased its stake in the Zhuhai Jialun Guangcai Chain Drug Store — this has a majority interest in the 400 ZJG Drugstores based in Guangdong Province — by the additional acquisition of software currently in use by over 2,000 drug stores in China.

Guangcai is a program for the management of drugstores, wholesalers and  manufacturers. The software is used by over 2,000 chain drugstores in Guangdong Province.

The enterprise software was developed by the founders of ZJG Drugstores.
Source: MarketWatch

The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) has agreed to purchase software from Kingsoft which means Microsoft misses out.

Kingsoft will supply all divisions of the State Grid Corporation throughout the country, as well as its 21 subsidiaries, with China-made office software. Chinese government agencies have reportedly warned that depending too much on foreign-made software could be a security hazard.

This news would not have made Steve Ballmer of Microsoft happy.

Kingsoft is confident that its WPS Office software is equal to any of its kind.

SGCC, established in 2002 has a registered capital of RMB200 billion and a brief to build and operate power grids and secure power supplies in 26 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
Source: China Update

China’s annual output value topped RMB 583.4 billion ($84.5 billion) in 2007, making it the world’s fourth largest software producer.

Fourth in the world sounds like a very strong position but the general view is there is still a long way to go.

Lou Qinjian, Industry and Information Technology vice minister and seen in our illustration, said at the International Software China 2008 show that the Chinese software industry had started from scratch since the country began its reform and opening-up three decades ago. It had grown into a fundamental industry with strategic importance to the country.

The country’s share of the global software industry rose from 1.2% in 2000 to 8.7 percent in 2007, with an annual growth rate of more than 30%.

Cao Jianlin, Science and Technology vice minister, said the country should make an even bigger effort in innovation and personnel training to sustain the industry’s long-term healthy development.

The International Software China 2008 was held in Beijing and focused on industrial policy planning, industrial standards, software technologies and development, investment and financing and enterprise personnel recruiting.
Source: Window of China

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reports China’s software exports surged in the first four months of this year, due largely to technological innovation.

Between January and April, exports totaled $3.27 billion, up 54.9% year-on-year.

Software exports grew from $720 million in 2001 to $10.24 billion in 2007.

The ministry said the sector’s income was RMB583.4 billion ($82 billion) in 2007, up 630% from 2001. Chinese software accounted for 8.7% of the global industry last year, up from 1.5% in 2001.

According to the ministry, the software sector’s revenue was RMB193.55 in the January-April period, up 31.2%.

In a very real sense this is the most amazing news about Chinese exports that has been published in these pages.

Software is typically written in code but that code is most often based on English. And the slightest slip means matters go very askew.

So the Chinese coders are working in, as it were, a double foreign language, and still have managed to get a substantial part of the world market. The mind boggles. The illustration is part of a demonstration being given by Microsoft.
Source: Jongo News

The National Copyright Administration (NCA) states that China saw a 53% increase in the number of firms using copyrighted software in the past few months. No comment was made as to why the figure has risen so sharply over such a short period.

In April 2006, NCA with eight other ministries jointly issued a circular promoting legal use of software among large companies.

The government ordered municipal and local authorities to buy computers with pre-installed legitimate software and required all domestic and imported computers to be sold with legitimate software pre-installed to prevent software piracy at source.

Liu Binjie, director of the General Administration of Press told a conference in Dec. 2007 that central and provincial governments had investigated 3,600 enterprises. And more than 1,100 companies faced penalties for using pirated software, .

Microsoft projected in April last year a 20% rise for the year’s sales in China due to a combination of government anti-piracy efforts and new products.

China’s software industry registered a 23.1% rise in sales from RMB390 billion ($52.77 billion in 2005 to RMB480 billion in 2006.

Statistics from the Supreme People’s Court indicate that Chinese courts handled 769 IPR cases in 2006 and prosecuted 1,212 offenders, up 52.2% and 62.21%, respectively, from 2005.

The top court last April stated that anyone who manufactures 500 or more counterfeit copies (discs) of computer software, music, movies, TV series and other audio-video products can be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to seven years.

The new rules also widen the definition of a ’serious IPR offender’ — anyone who produces more than 2,500 counterfeit copies — can now be jailed for up to seven years.

Source: China View