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Microsoft doc standard meets opposition in China (2) |
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16:29, August 13, 2007 |
Before 2004 when domestic Office software was not mature enough, MS Office was priced at between 2400 yuan and 2800 yuan for governmental procurement, said China Standard Software Executive Vice President Qin Yong, who has been through the bidding process.
But in 2004, when the domestic-made Office software was more competitive and priced at only 400 to 500 yuan, the MS lowered its price, immediately to 700 to 800 yuan, Qin said.
"The sky won''t fall in since domestic applications are now as good as MS Office and maybe even better as they support more China's minority languages, such as Yi," Hu added, "and domestic UOF Office software, half or one third of the price of MS Office, will be on the market within a year."
Ni said that the UOF and the ODF should combine to fight the OOXML since the two standards have a significant integration potential as 70 percent of them are the same and 20 percent of them are transferable.
"Although the MS Office has more than 400 million users globally, users of StarOffice and OpenOffice, software based on ODF, have reached tens of millions worldwide," Hu Caiyong told Xinhua.
Meanwhile, there are more than 60 million computers in China and 20 million are added every year, Hu said.
"Considering the potential Chinese market and the maturity of the self-developed software, the integration of the UOF and the ODF is quite realistic and able to gather enough strength to fight the OOXML," Hu said.
China''s decision is important since the OOXML standard will be rejected as long as 11 out of the 30 ISO-JTC1 members vote against it, Hu said.
The OOXML has raised widespread attention in China. Enter "resist", "Microsoft" and "document standard" in Baidu, the largest search engine for the Chinese language, 112,000 web pages will show up.
Meanwhile, in an online survey conducted by the CCS, which has more than 100 organization members and more than 40,000 individual members, 6,400 votes were recorded against the OOXML with just 502 votes in support.
However, the OOXML has received other sources of support - the European Computer Manufacturers Association has taken it as the European standard.
China Software Association secretary general Zou Bian also supported the OOXML and said that it was "a very good thing" to support the OOXML to become an ISO standard.
It will provide government organizations and common users multiple choices on creating, storing and integrating their electronic documents, he said.
Local independent software vendors can also develop applications on this standard which will be beneficial for the progress of the software industry, he added.
The Ministry of Information Industry, who is responsible for the vote regarding the ISO, told Xinhua that it would not comment at the present moment. (one U.S. dollar is equal to 7.57 yuan)
Source: Xinhua
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