Microsoft is recruiting over 1,000 additional employees in China this year and boost research and development spending by 15% as the software giant looks to boost its mobile reach in the highly lucrative region.
Microsoft is promoting its Windows 8 mobile operating system but came late to the market and trails Apple Iand Google , whose Android system is widely used in China.
In China nearly 400 million people surf the Web using mobile phones and other devices.
“We respect that we have two players in the market which have a strong role, and we feel ready to attack and have different offers to basically change the game plan on that one,” said Microsoft’s CEO for China, Ralph Haupter, at a news conference.
The new employees will be in addition to Microsoft’s workforce of 4,500 in China and will be spread across research and development, marketing and customer service.
In addition, Microsoft’s six development centres in China that now spend about 80 per cent of their time working on products for global markets will focus more on creating offerings tailored to Chinese customers.
Research spending in China will rise by 15% over last year’s $500 million, with the current research staff of 3,000 expanded by about 15%.
Microsoft also plans to expand its cloud computing business in China, the executives said. Zhang said about 100,000 commercial customers now use its private cloud computing service and a service for use by the public is being developed.
China had 538 million people online at the end of July, up 11 per cent from a year earlier, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre, an industry group. The share that uses wireless devices grew twice as fast, rising 22 per cent to 388 million, or 70 per cent of the total.
Android dominates the Chinese smartphone market, used on 76.7 per cent of phones in the second quarter of this year, according to Analysys International, a research firm. Apple’s iPhone dominates the higher end of the market.