[photopress:It_Ya_Qin_Zhang.jpg,full,alignright]Microsoft will spend $280 million on a Beijing research and development center and double its full-time R&D staff in China to 3,000 over the next few years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft China’s chairman, Dr Zhang Ya-Qin, said during the center’s groundbreaking ceremony that China is the company’s largest R&D area outside the US. The center will be finished in 2010.
In 2006, the firm agreed to spend US$31 million on R&D labs in China, and it entered into an R&D joint venture with Lenovo last year. Microsoft’s decision to focus R&D on China indicates the country’s importance.
Microsoft does not disclose its revenue from the Chinese market. But Fortune Magazine estimated in a story last year that the software giant’s revenue from China would exceed $700 million last year, about 1.5% of Microsoft’s global sales.
All true and interesting. But no mention of the situation with AliBaba which is owned, in part, by Yahoo! which has just spurned, or been spurned (perspectives differ) by Microsoft. Perhaps AliBaba is the elephant in the parlor.
Source: China Economic Review Daily Briefing and Sinacom