China Looks To Protect XP Systems

The Chinese government has said it is negotiating with Microsoft over the pricing for possible Windows 8 upgrades, but for the short term is looking into specialised security products to protect its Windows XP systems following Microsoft’s cutoff of XP support on 8 April.

Microsoft officially ended its technical support for the 13-year-old software on 8 April, although it has agreed to provide a basic level of security for XP until July 2015. In China, where an estimated one-quarter of PCs run XP, companies including web giant Tencent, software developer Kingsoft and search engine Sougu.com have announced technical support services for XP, including security services, in order to help users through a “transition period” that could last several years.

Risk

The government is now evaluating possible options for its Windows XP systems, and admitted at a press conference on Tuesday that they now pose a potential security risk.

“Security problems could arise because of a lack of technical support after Microsoft stopped providing services, making computers with XP vulnerable to hackers,” said Yan Xiaohong, National Copyright Administration deputy director, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency.

The government is “conducting appraisal of related security products” and will promote such products to ensure users’ security, Yan said.

At the same time, the government is evaluating its options where it comes to upgrading to Windows 8, but said cost is a barrier to such an upgrade, according to Yan. The government is negotiating with Microsoft over the issue, he said.

“Windows 8 is fairly expensive and will increase government procurement costs,” he said. Windows 8 sells for 888 yuan (£85) in China.

China began a crackdown on pirated software within the government in 2010, spending hundreds of millions of US dollars on legal software, so that by the end of last year all pirated software had been eliminated from government agencies above the county level, according to the report. The government is now looking to extend this campaign to large state-owned enterprises, Yan said.

XP market share

Windows XP is still believed to have a global market share of about 29 percent. Following the failure of Windows Vista to gain traction, Microsoft has found it hard to convince businesses to abandon the trusted operating system in favour of the company’s more accessible Windows 7 and somewhat experimental Windows 8.

In the middle of 2013, a survey of 1,789 Japanese government institutions conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun found that more than 200,000 machines in the land of the rising sun will continue to be powered by Windows XP after the retirement date, because it would cost around $2.4 billion (£1.5b) to complete the upgrade.

Google is among the companies that has said it will continue to support its own products on Windows XP, promising last year it will continue to support the Chrome browser on XP until at least 2015.

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