Follow-up to 1/5 story "Microsoft is
Losing to Linux in China, Pakistan"
By Kwok
Written: January 5, 2002
Just read the similar news from
a Chinese site. The story is like this:
Microsoft did send a mysterious person to
Beijing for this business, but the site did not mention who.
In 12/20/2001, a security hole in WinXP was
discovered. This caused a serious concern to the Chinese government, as WinXP
is still a brand new OS.
In 12/27/2001, which is last day of the
negotiation, Microsoft still insisted OfficeXP must be bundled with WinXP,
other the price of one WinXP will be raised from RMB$850 to RMB$1200. The
Chinese government then asked for bundling Office2k instead of OfficeXP.
Microsoft said they won't sell Office2k because it was obsoleted, however they
can provide a patch to "downgrade" OfficeXP to Office2k FOR THE SAME PRICE AS
OFFICEXP.
Microsoft quoted Beijing municiple government a
total of RMB$50M for 5k sets (probably a bundle of hardware and software) of
RMB$10k per set. WinXP is RMB$850 per copy and OfficeXP RMB$2650 per copy.
Upgrade cost will be WinXP RMB$475 and OfficeXP$1534 after two years.
Microsoft was then out of the game by 5:30pm on
12/27/2001.
Regards,
Kwok
The original news story from Mario is
here.
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