Microsoft feels Chinese Tremors

China with around 1 billion consumers is a huge market for any big corporation. And reports already claim that Google have made compromises to keep government pressures under control. Microsoft too is feeling the tremors of the Chinese effect.

Under heavy pressure from national government officials, Beijing’s municipal government cancelled a contract with Microsoft worth USD3.5 million. The deal was to provide the city offices with Microsoft applications like Windows Operating System and Office Suite.

China has been pro-active in promoting internally developed software and governments prefer to use homegrown solutions. And this decision comes from pressures from related Chinese rivals of Microsoft. In fact, some officials criticized the decision to buy Microsoft application by calling it a threat to national security as the applications were developed in foreign countries!

Linux is being highly promoted by Chinese software companies to compete with commercial offerings. If the trends are to be believed, Microsoft might face bigger challenges in the future to compete in the Chinese market. With rampant piracy prevailing in china, government orders are one of the biggest revenue sources for software companies.