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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Prognosticator who wrote (58412)	5/24/2001 9:37:10 PM
From: Harry Sharp	Respond to of 74651

Not to worry. Even if everyone in China pirates both the OS and Office I’m sure Microsoft will continue to develop Chinese language versions in perpetuity.

To: Prognosticator who wrote (58412)	5/24/2001 11:16:40 PM
From: t2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

This remains to be seen. With all the US-China tension, being branded a US product will not be a real selling point. Especially being branded a Microsoft product The Chinese want to become a worldwide economic power, even if it does not become a democracy. You can bet if the world is running on Microsoft software, the Chinese companies will end up doing the same. They will have to if they want to set up operations in other parts of world. Cost of NOT running on the world standard would put them at a competitive disadvantage...compatibility issues etc.. Microsoft is more important to the Chinese than Coke or Pepsi. US/Chinese tension will be a non-issue for Microsoft. Coke or Levis can be replaced by an alternative quite easily. The reality is that the Chinese will have no cheap real alternative to Microsoft and that is the real problem. To develop their own standard would be an almost impossible task; then there will the compatibility issues again in the developing world economy. Piracy is temporary as I stated earlier, it is not really that big of a deal for MSFT in the Chinese market. Selling software to the Chinese is not really key at this stage. They know sooner or later, they will be forced to pay..might as well get them hooked in the meantime.