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Chinese ministries upgrade homegrown software
福布斯：中国部委升级国产软件
Reuters, 08.15.03, 4:51 AM ET
BEIJING, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Fifteen Chinese ministries have upgraded their office software to the latest version of a homegrown brand, a rival to Microsoft Corp (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people), a newspaper said on Friday.
The Ministry of Commerce, the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Bureau and other governmwent departments had upgraded to WPS Office2003 from an earlier version developed by domestic software maker Kingsoft Co, the People's Daily newspaper reported.
It was the first large-scale software upgrade in government offices, the newspaper said. Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.
Li Xue, a spokeswoman for Kingsoft, told Reuters the government bought 50,000 copies of WPS software in 2002, but declined to give a value for the purchase.
"Our advantage compared with Microsoft is that we are more suitable for Chinese language users and have competitive prices," she said. "An important factor for the government to adopt our programmes is security."
Kingsoft had signed many orders with provincial governments in Beijing, Guangdong and Zhejiang, the newspaper said. Li declined to confirm the deals.
Analysts say government agencies bought about $200 million in computer software last year, mostly Microsoft products.
WPS was launched in 1988 in China as word-processing software but was quickly overtaken by Microsoft Windows in the 1990s.
The government has been pushing the development of a homegrown software industry and a national standard for open-source Linux software to counter the spread of Microsoft in the last few years.
Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
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