Why Steve Jobs Should Fear Bill Gates

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big Mac fan, and that’s exactly why I’m writing this. Steve Jobs needs to start worrying about Bill Gates, big time. Why? Because of Microsoft’s presence in China, that’s why.

Microsoft’s Asia research headquarters is located in Beijing. According to Microsoft, “Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia, founded in November 1998, is Microsoft Corp.’s basic research facility in the Asia-Pacific region. The goal of Microsoft Research Asia is to achieve Microsoft’s vision of future computing by attracting the most talented researchers in the field of computing and becoming one of the best computer science laboratories in the world.”

The Microsoft Building in Beijing.*

How well are they doing attracting the best of the best from the largest pool of talent on the planet? Thomas Friedman writes in The World is Flat:

As Gates explained to me, it is now the leading research center for Microsoft. They have three research centers, one in Cambridge, one in Redmond, and since 1998, one in Beijing. I don’t know if you know how they organized this research center: they went to the leading scientific and technical universities around China, a country of 1.3 billion people, and gave IQ tests to the top 2,000 students. Then they chose twenty for their research center in Beijing. Do you know what kind of salmon you have to be to swim upstream in China to make it to the Microsoft Research Center in Beijing, which the Chinese government allows to grant postdoctoral degrees? As they say at the Microsoft Research Center in Beijing, when you are one in a million, well, there are 1,300 other people just like you.

In comparison, what’s Apple’s presence in China like? iPods are quite popular in Shanghai, at least. However, there is no Apple Store in China. Furthermore, I can’t even buy a legitimate copy of iLife ‘06 from Apple in China yet, despite the fact that there is an Apple China iLife ‘06 webpage and iLife ‘06 started shipping in other countries over two weeks ago. When I called Apple’s China rep the other day asking about iLife they couldn’t even give me an approximate shipping date or price. On the other hand, I can almost guarantee that I’ll be able to get a pirated version of Windows Vista for 10RMB within a week of there being legal copies of it on the market in the States (whenever that will be).

What can Apple do?
1. Start by making friends with as many Chinese government officials as possible – offer each member of the Standing Party and their entire extended family 5G iPods.
2. Start an Apple research center in China and pay double the wages Microsoft’s China research center is offering.
3. Start a massive advertising campaign in China being very careful to connect with Chinese consumers by demonstrating that because of Mac OS X’s powerful Unix underpinnings it is the world’s most advanced operating system and that if Chinese kids learn how to use Unix they will have far greater chances as an engineer or scientist than if they only know Windows.
4. Open up an Apple Store in Shanghai with a huge storefront on Nanjing Lu and in Beijing on Wangfujing.
5. Do away with DRM on Chinese language iTunes.app, iPods sold in China and the Chinese iTunes music store – intellectual property is very much a foreign idea to Chinese people and Apple is not going to sell 1.3 billion iPods in China (not that most Chinese can afford one) if iPods cripple people’s ability to transfer data between their own devices and their friends.

*Thanks to Steven over at Pax Asiana for the photo. And Steven, if you’re reading this, welcome to the world of Mac.

Tags Microsoft, Apple, China

Explore posts in the same categories: Technology