NANJING, Dec. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- A Chinese IT company has made a minor landmark success in breaking Microsoft's monopoly of the office software market by signing a contract with a Japanese IT product dealer, Internet Telephone, to sell its Yongzhong Office software in Japan.

    Before signing the contract, Internet Telephone tracked and assessed the performance of the China-made office software for three months. It finally reached the deal to sell it on the Japanese market to partly replace Microsoft's Office series. Internet Telephone has started publicity work on the Chinese software. It is expected that sales could reach over five billion yen-worth in 2004.

    Besides a Japanese-language version, the Yongzhong Technology Co. Ltd, based in Wuxi City, in east China's Jiangsu Province, hasalso provided versions in English and traditional Chinese characters.

    With the rapid expansion of the global information industry, some countries and regions are seeking to break Microsoft's monopoly of office software to protect information security and lower costs. They have launched research and development of software that could be substituted for Microsoft's products.

    Founded in 2000 as a joint venture between a local government-controlled company and returned Chinese who had received education

    overseas, the Yongzhong Technology Co. Ltd put all its 200 software engineers into the development of the company's only product, Yongzhong Office, and thus became China's largest developer of office software.

    Its product, accomplished in late 2001, was approved as "large integrated office software with self-owned intellectual property, and its overall technological indices have reached the international advanced level in the field," according to a joint assessment panel of the Information Industry Ministry, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Jiangsu provincial government.

    The company completed a renewed version of Yongzhong Office 2003 last August, which is almost fully compatible with Microsoft documents, giving great convenience to users to exchange documents with Microsoft Office users.

    The company said 78 patents involving its products have been authorized in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, the United States and member countries of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Enditem