Microsoft Is Not Making Money in China?

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer claims that Microsoft does not make the same money in China as they do in India or Korea. They attribute to the reason that China does not show effective results of cracking down piracy. Sure this is objected by the insiders.

As a matter of fact, China is well-known of widely piracy. There are pirate videos, books, and brands and so on in China as you can see everywhere. Also the reason is complicated. Chinese people do not have the legal awareness as Americans do. Few people know piracy. They tend to purchase an item which looks good, cheap and they can make use of it. They care less about if the item is original or non-original.

Insiders object by saying that the government puts a great effort to solve the problem. The software pirate rate has been reduced to 30%. Take 2010 as example, the PCs had been sold out 50,000,000, suppose each one is $50, 80% has been installed, Microsoft has earned $2,000,000,000. Because the world-wide uniform price, Microsoft surely encounters cold reception in China’s retails market.

Second, another person thinks that it is not because of piracy but monopoly. If a new CPU has been launched to the market which costs consumers more, they will choose another one which is cheaper. As Intel and AMD compete with each other, the price is reducing gradually. Thus consumers have the right to choose the cheaper one.

Third, Microsoft sets an unreasonable standard for Chinese people to purchase micro software. Only if they do not buy it at the set price, Microsoft will say it is pirate. But actually China’s intellectual property laws are very strict and tight. There are no basically laws omission problems. In addition, how could Microsoft require people to purchase it at a high price while they promote free trade in the market?

The reasons are many and complex. It might be the huge pressure from the whole internet world. Microsoft made the way to China by pirating first and then they earned money by cracking down piracy. In a word, Microsoft makes a profit in China. But they wish to earn more.