“When Bill Gates was questioned about Chinese support for Linux
during an interview with Red Herring recently, he claimed that “our
fastest growing server business is in China”, which was surprising.
Gates was also extremely upset when the interviewer suggested that
the Chinese liked Linux: “What the heck are you talking about? I
think what you’re talking about is that you’re assuming that the
American does a reliable job in reporting on China. I doubt you
read the government’s press release… what the press in [the US]
wrote and what the facts are is 100 percent different.”
“We were intrigued, so we decided to investigate what was going
on in the software business in China.”
“We found that although Gates has made six sales trips to
China, Linux is gaining ground. Graham Brant, Microsoft’s general
manager for Microsoft Hong Kong, said in May that Microsoft has a
“a great market share [in China] but not a lot of revenue”.
Microsoft software is just too expensive for the market. With
Microsoft not being able to ensure that Windows is pre-loaded on
most PCs in China, the consequence is that the piracy rate is
believed to be around 95 per cent.”