According to a report from yesterday, the Chinese government announced that they would be banning the installation of Windows 8 on government computers. They claim that this is due to energy conservation and security reasons, with the former being a pretty odd reason. That being said, with Windows XP having officially been retired by Microsoft, what will the Chinese government do?
Well in a statement released by Microsoft to The Verge, it looks like the Chinese government will go for the next best thing: Windows 7. Microsoft has since confirmed that they will continue selling Windows 7 to the Chinese government. However they will also be looking at trying to persuade the government to hop on board the Windows 8 train by working with relevant government agencies.
“Microsoft has been working proactively with the Central Government Procurement Center and other government agencies through the evaluation process to ensure that our products and services meet all government procurement requirements. We have been and will continue to provide Windows 7 to government customers. At the same time we are working on the Windows 8 evaluation with relevant government agencies.”
As we said yesterday, with an estimation of 50% of China’s desktop market still running on Windows XP, the decision not to upgrade to Windows 8 could be a blow to Microsoft. However with the installation of Windows 7, we guess that’s a good alternative, although presumably Microsoft would have preferred if they had gone with Windows 8 instead.