BEIJING, April 23 -- Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, plans to open more campuses and increase the number of researchers in China amid sales loss to piracy in the world's second-biggest computer market.

    "We are initiating new campuses in Beijing and Shanghai," Bill Gates, chairman of the United States-based company, said in a speech on Saturday at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia on southern Hainan Island.

    "We see us and other major players doing this expansion throughout Asia."

    Microsoft is stepping up research operations in a market where about 80 percent of business software is pirated, and more than 90 percent of 1.3 billion people don't own computers, Bloomberg News reported.

    Last week, Gates, 51, announced a 3 U.S. dollars software package for students that may help spur sales in emerging countries. "People are interested in China because of the domestic demand," Robert Chiu, head of technology media and telecommunications banking at Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd, said at the forum.

    "China is arguably the biggest market and China will be the logical choice" for companies to focus research and development, he said.

    Microsoft, which started its first research center in Asia 10 years ago, will establish one with Lenovo Group Ltd to help develop new computers and hand-held electronics. The companies haven't set a date for when the center will begin operations, Lenovo, China's biggest computer seller, said last Wednesday.

    "Not only is Asia benefiting from the use of technology, Asia will also be the source of breakthrough and advances in technology," Gates said on Saturday.

    "We'll more than double the capacity we have to hire R&D staff" in Beijing and Shanghai, he said, without specifying the number of centers or people to be added.

    Microsoft China Research & Development Group, which has centers in Beijing and Shanghai, employed 1,200 people as of October, according to the company's Website.

    Companies, including Microsoft, lost 1.9 billion dollars of potential sales in China last year because of piracy, down from 1.6 billion dollars in 2005, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a lobby group of copyright holders.

    About 82 percent of all business software in China last year was pirated, the group said.

    Microsoft will sell the 3 dollars package of Windows, Office and educational programs to governments that want to load the software onto personal computers for students, Gates said in Beijing at a conference for government leaders on Thursday.

    (Source: Shanghai Daily)