Chinese Media Suspicious Of Microsoft Motives
Nick Miller
03/23/99
The West Australian
Page 42
Copyright West Australian Newspapers Limited, all rights reserved.
MICROSOFT'S triumphant entry into China has drawn a fierce backlash from the local press.
On a trip to Shenzhenon two weeks ago Bill Gates announced the launch of Venus, a set-top box that Microsoft hopes will turn millions of Chinese TVs into Internet and DVD machines.
Mr Gates was treated like royalty on the trip itself. But this week there has been a big anti-Microsoft attack in the press.
Headlines included: Evil plans are launched with Venus, Behind the smile of Venus and Will Venus bring us fortune or disaster?
A Chinese language Internet site, used as a demo in the launch, published a long anti-Microsoft essay.
The issue must seem a familiar one to Mr Gates: he was accused of trying to monopolise the Chinese computer software market.
In a popular Chinese magazine, journalist Fang Xingdong questioned the way Mr Gates always seemed to come to China bearing gifts.
"It is in fact yet another major Microsoft campaign to compete with China's information technology industry," he wrote. "And judging from the muddle-headed blind rush among domestic Chinese firms that were so anxious to attend to Gates during his Shenzhen visit, Microsoft has once again succeeded easily."
Fang argued that Venus is Microsoft's attempt to get Windows CE as the dominant information appliance operating system, thereby controlling China's new generation of operating platforms for devices such as pocket and palm computers, PDAs and set-top boxes.
China has more than 300 million televisions, 20 million cellular phones and 40 million video CD players, but the installed base of PCs is still small, according to Microsoft.
When previewing the product, Mr Gates said he wanted to use Venus to expose "millions and millions" of people to computing and the Internet.
*Last week Microsoft unveiled the latest version of Internet Explorer. IE 5, available for free download from Microsoft, was more compact and had better caching resulting in faster operation, Microsoft claimed. It also includes better search technology and a simplified interface for first-time users.
|
