Published in News

Ballmer says software is a Chinese takeway

by on27 May 2011


They are eating into my profits
The shy and retiring CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer has complained that the Chinese are taking chopsticks to his profits.

Ballmer moaned that rampant software piracy in China has eaten into his company's revenue in what is soon to be the world's top PC market. China's revenue was only five percent of that in the United States, even though personal computer sales in the two countries are nearly equal.

He said told hundreds of employees at the company's new Beijing offices that while PC sales in China in 2011 will roughly equal US sales, "our revenue in China will be about a twentieth of our revenue in the United States".

But he rejected the idea that Chinese punters cannot afford his company's core Office software even if not everybody in China could afford to buy a PC. He claimed if people could afford a PC they could afford the software.
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