The announcement from Xinhua news agency that the Chinese government is banning the use of Windows 8 has Microsoft surprised and baffled. According to the company they have been working hand in hand with their government agencies in ensuring that their products and services rendered should match their requirements. Base on the reason given by Central Government Procurement Center they had issued the ban to ensure that the security of all their government computers are improved. It was not fully explained the relevance of the ban in ensuring its security.

The decision to go with the ban came after Microsoft has announced their withdrawal of support for Windows XP. The reason behind their pronouncement is for the users to engage and adopt a newer version of an Operating System (OS) that offers a more secure Windows. Without this support, users of Windows XP would be left vulnerable to possible hacking and viruses.  With Windows XP widely used throughout China, the government does not want to take risk into engaging any OS without any guarantees of technical support.

Microsoft had always face a long list of issues with China. Among the list is of China being the center of piracy. This has eventually led their company to earn lesser revenues in the country as compared to Netherlands. Last July 2012, nine computer resellers from the country were found to have been producing unlicensed software of Windows 8 that is yet to be launched. They tried collaborating with the government to catch this perpetrators but no results have yet to be shown.

Chinese officials have expressed to their local press that their country should start developing their own OS so that they would not rely heavily on foreign companies. They want all their desktop, laptops, and tablets to have an OS that is not Windows 8.

Now that the usage of Windows 8 is being banned, what will happen next for China and Microsoft?