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Microsoft CEO Meets Indian Prime Minister

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 November 2004, 09:00 CST

NEW DELHI -- Trying to retain Microsoft's dominance in the Indian software market amid increasing competition, company CEO Steve Ballmer brought his campaign Tuesday to the country's leadership.

In his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which lasted more than half an hour, Ballmer promised to make the Windows operating system available in 14 Indian languages within a year and reiterated that Microsoft Corp. would help to broaden computer usage across the country.

"We had a great conversation. The prime minister was quite open," said Ballmer, who met with Singh as part of Microsoft's efforts to push for increased government use of its products.

"The first thing on the PM's mind was support for all Indian languages in computer software that people use. I updated him on 'Project Bhasha' to bring MS Windows and Office in 14 Indian languages by this time next year," Ballmer told reporters.

Localizing Windows has been a key component of Microsoft's strategy to stay ahead of its competition in India, where only a small fraction of its 1.06 billion people speak English.

The company is also preparing to launch cheaper editions of Windows in India, which it hopes will enable personal computer vendors to offer computers at significantly lower prices and thus sell more.

Despite being one of the world's leading providers of information technology services, few Indian households actually have computers. Only 12 people out of every 1,000 Indians own a computer, and Internet connections total about 4.5 million.

"The government needs to help to get computers in the hands of more people," Ballmer said.

India has become a battleground for supremacy between Microsoft's Windows - a proprietary software - and Linux, the open source software that can be downloaded free from the Internet.

Several Indian state governments have embraced Linux, while others have accepted software donations from Microsoft.

When asked to comment on the growing popularity of Linux in India, Ballmer said his company is ready to compete.

"We are a good competitor in absolutely everything we do. But we also have lots of big goals that are independent of competition," he said.

Ballmer is in India on a three-day visit that began Monday to strike deals with Indian companies, explore partnerships with government organizations, and step up plans to hire more Indian programmers.

On Monday, he officially opened Microsoft's new offices in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, then traveled to the technology hub of Bangalore where he signed multimillion dollar software partnerships with two of India's leading outsourcing firms.

The deals with Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. will enable them to use Microsoft technology to build software for their clients.

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Microsoft Corp.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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