A booth promoting Microsoft Corp's Windows 7 operating system in Beijing. China has the world's greatest number of netizens with the majority preferring to use IE 6, which is better suited to older operating systems such as Windows XP. [Photo / China Daily]

Despite anti-piracy efforts, Chinese Web users run free, but old, software

BEIJING - Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer 6 - prehistoric by today's technological standards - remains the most widely used Web browser in China.

That's because of a high piracy rate for the Windows XP operating system, which supports it, resulting from the fact that Chinese customers are used to free software and don't like to pay, industry experts said.

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According to a report released on March 22 by Baidu Inc, China's largest Internet company by market value, the four current versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) held a 65.3 percent share of the domestic Web browser market last month, with the 5-year-old IE 6 accounting for the biggest share at 39.68 percent.

Simon Leung, vice-president of Microsoft Corp and chief executive officer of Microsoft (China) Co Ltd, announced the release of the company's latest Web browser IE 9 on March 21. Leung said that his aim is for IE to occupy 80 percent of the browser market in China.

However, the browser will not support older Windows operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows 98.

According to Leung, IE 9 is the "most popular" version in Microsoft's history, with the number of global downloads hitting 2,350,000 on the day of its release.

However, China still has the greatest number of netizens with the majority preferring to use IE 6, which is better suited to older operating systems such as Windows XP.

"Microsoft's sales revenue comes from sales of the Windows operating system, not from its Internet browsers", said Cao Junbo, chief analyst at the domestic IT research company iResearch. "The company develops new browsers to stimulate sales of its operating systems," he said.

Despite having just launched IE 9, the company said this month that it has already started developing the next version, called IE 10. However, analysts doubt that IE 9 will significantly improve sales of the company's newer operating system, Windows 7.

"The majority of Chinese customers are not in the habit of paying for official software and they will simply stick with what they already have," Cao said.

"In China's PC software market, more than 70 percent of the software is illegal," said Yu Weidong, general manager of the intellectual property rights department at Microsoft China, in an earlier interview with China Daily.

According to joint research conducted last year by China's State Intellectual Property Office and the IT consulting website Chinalabs.com, however, the rate of software piracy in China was 45 percent in 2009, 2 percentage points lower than 2008.

Microsoft China also acknowledges that Chinese computer users do not update their software as often as Windows users in other countries.

Leung said that more than 100 million users in China don't know which operating system they are using, indicating that users do not care about browsers and only want to enjoy the online experience.

"I think if we do more promotion about the features available on our new products, Chinese customers will become aware of the advantages," said Wei Qing, marketing officer of the consumer and online division at Microsoft China. The company will conduct more promotional campaigns and activity in China this year to increase sales of Windows 7, Wei said.

Since users do not want to update their operating systems, switching to other browsers is an alternative open to them, said Cao.

China has several alternative Web browsers made by domestic Internet companies, such as Baidu Inc, Tencent Holdings Ltd and Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd.

Unlike Microsoft, domestic companies make a profit from their Internet page views through advertising revenue rather than from selling software.

"They provide applications with more flexibility that can adapt to different operating systems", said Cao from iResearch.

With about 450 million regular Internet users, the Chinese Web-browser market will be a major battlefield for software companies, Cao said, because browsers are an important application needed to link Internet users to Web content.

Domestic and overseas browser companies are accelerating the pace of development by working with a greater number of content partners to win customers.

To promote its new IE browser and attract users, Microsoft is cooperating with local companies to better compete against its local peers.

The company is collaborating with the video website Tudou.com, the payment company Alipay.com Co Ltd and the group-buying website Meituan.com.