p2pnet.net News:- "The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren’t," Microsoft ceo Steve Ballmer told an industry conference yesterday.

That’s interesting, particularly stacked against a Bill Gates comment to students about piracy in China in 1998.

As long as they’re going to steal software, "we want them to steal ours," he declared. "They’ll get sort of addicted …"

These days, a low-cost PC is another way to hook new users, Ballmer said, quoted in a ZDNet story.

"There has to be…a $100 computer to go down-market in some of these countries. We have to engineer (PCs) to be lighter and cheaper," he’s quoted as saying

People in poorer countries have "Pay-by-the-drink computer use" concept that’s important place in the market, said Bullmer, going on that Microsoft has, "five times as many Hotmail users in India and China than there are PCs because of this".

But piracy of Windows and Office software in emerging markets has become a major concern for the software giant, especially among business users who can afford to pay for software, ZDNet states.

Ballmer also defended a comment made earlier this year by Bill Gates who said security won’t be an issue in three years. "If (that) was something we weren’t shooting for, no one should come to this keynote," Ballmer says in the ZDNet report. "Whether that statement will come to be true or not remains to be seen. But it expresses Bill’s fundamental optimism."

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See:-

1998 – Bill Gates’ China sales trip, p2pnet, July 3, 2004

$100 computer – Ballmer: We need a $100 PC, ZDNet, October 21, 2004

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