The WPS Office2002 is a wide publicity being presently given by Kingsoft in a bid to challenge its American counterpart Microsoft's Office2000 for a share of China's software market of which though Microsoft has taken a major slice.
WPS Office2002 is a brand-new product claiming complete independent proprietary right by famous software promoter Kingsoft in China. Put out as the only one and the latest among other similar editions domestically developed as learned, it is most outstanding for its integrated processing backing up over 80 languages and auto picture-text typesetting technology.
According to Kingsoft, WPS Office2002 technologically compares well to other similar Microsoft products, much sought after for a price level merely about one tenth or one fifth of its foreign counterparts.
But Microsoft Office series have by themselves enjoyed wide market fame as a mainstream product among tens of thousands of Chinese computer users. As things stand with the present state of China's software market, Microsoft office series have already taken a de facto monopolistic market share. Strenuous efforts are needed beyond doubt for Kingsoft to open up the country's software market by taking advantage of its low-priced technology-advanced products.
Kingsoft had once by its Chinese processing system once occupied a 90 percent market share in 1994 as reported. Unexpectedly it had once with its WPS been relegated to rock bottom by Microsoft's sale of Word6.0 on the Chinese market.
Since 1997, however, back to its feet, Kingsoft has a series of software developed under Windows fit in with word processing in China. By the end of last year end, it had by relying on the strength of its updated technology won the biggest acquisition deal from the Beijing municipal government. In contrast, Microsoft had ended up a loser.
(People's Daily June 21, 2002)
