These offices, which are subject to approval by the Chinese government, are targeted to open in the third quarter of 2001. While Borland products have previously been made available in China through authorized distributors and are very familiar to China’s software development community, the representative offices are the first step in Borland’s plans to establish a wholly owned subsidiary in China. With the establishment of a Borland subsidiary in China customers in China will be able to buy Borland products directly including Delphi, JBuilder, C++ Builder, VisiBroker, Borland AppServer and AppCenter as well as Borland’s newest product, Kylix, the first native rapid application development (RAD) tool for the Linux platform.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), China’s purchases of IT hardware, software and services were expected to reach nearly U.S. $14 billion in 2000 and triple by 2004, accounting for nearly a third of the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan. In addition, China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) forecasts that software sales in China will reach U.S. $3.8 billion in 2001, a 12 percent increase from the previous year. In 2000, the Chinese government announced its plans to standardize on the Linux operating system instead of Windows, said Dale L. Fuller, Borland’s president and chief executive officer. As Borland is the only software company with a native rapid application development tool for Linux, China has the potential to be a strong market for Borland. We are very excited about the prospects that Borland has in China and, over the past few months, a number of our senior executives have committed a substantial amount of their time to overseeing our expansion into China.
To facilitate its plans to expand its presence in China and to demonstrate its commitment to the area, Borland recently participated in a trade mission to China co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce/International Trade Administration’s Office of Information Technologies and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The trade mission was co-led by Michelle O’Neill, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Information Technology Industries, and Lauren Hall, executive vice president of SIIA. Borland was represented on the trade mission by Doug Barre, Borland’s chief operating officer, Keith E. Gottfried, Borland’s general counsel, and Andrew Wong, Borland’s country manager in China. During the 10 day-long visit, Borland and six other U.S. Information Technology firms specializing in Internet, e-commerce, and wireless technologies traveled to Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to meet with potential partners, resellers and distributors, in addition to various officials in China’s Ministry of Information Industry.
The mission to China exceeded all of our expectations, said Mr. Barre. The high level of interest in Borland and Borland products expressed by established distributors, resellers, software integrators and other potential partners that we met with in China, not to mention the senior officials in the Ministry of Information Industry that we were introduced to, illustrates for us the wonderful opportunity that Borland has to become a leading software vendor in China.
