Said to be due to security concerns after the end-of-support of Windows XP, China has announced that it will ban Windows 8 from being used on new government computers. This ban is said to cover desktops, laptops, and tablet PCs that are to be obtained by its central procurement agency.
While the move might seems a little bit baffling, it is apparently done to lessen the government dependency on foreign operating system and to avoid facing the same end-of-support situation as per Windows XP. To put things in perspective, Windows XP is said to have an astonishing 70-percent market share in China and naturally, most of government computers also run on Windows XP.
Hence, the move seems rather justifiable. With that, China will now focus on building its own OS based on Linux for official usage in the future.
However, do note that the ban on Windows 8 only applies (so far) to government computers which means that consumers in China are still free to use the OS. So, the ban is not the end of Microsoft’s time in China.
[Source: Xinhua]
