Foreign software equally treated in govt procurement

BEIJING -- A senior Chinese copyright official said on Tuesday that foreign providers received equal treatment during a massive government procurement of licensed software.

From late 2010, the Chinese central and provincial governments had spend more than 1 billion yuan ($156.9 million) on 158,823 operating system licenses, 506,693 copies of office software, plus anti-virus and other special-purpose software in a national anti-piracy campaign which ran till the end of June.

The campaign did not give preference to domestic software providers, said Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, adding that Chinese and foreign companies took similar shares in the project.

Yan said that with regards to operation systems, foreign companies have a notable larger market share, while Chinese domestic firms took about two-thirds of the office applications but still earned less than their foreign counterparts due to lower pricing.

Foreign software companies are encouraged to sell their products in China and are protected under Chinese law, said Yan.

Yan also reviewed the progress of domestic-made software.

The anti-piracy campaign means a lot to the environment of intellectual property protection and brought a huge market for both domestic and foreign companies, said Yan.

The gross income of China's software sector topped 1.8 trillion yuan in 2011, accounting about 15 percent of the global market.