South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication said yesterday that it is considering taking action against Microsoft Corp’s local subsidiary which is alleged to be dumping software. Domestic software manufacturer Hangul Computer Co claims that Microsoft is selling several programs, including Microsoft Office, Windows 98 upgrade, Visual Studio and BackOffice in packages to schools and colleges at a tenth of the usual market price. It has lodged a complaint with the Fair Trade Commission.
We are also offering schools word processing software packages at a discounted rate. But Microsoft is going overboard by selling all sorts of its major products by the bundle at a ridiculously low price, said a Hangul executive who accused Microsoft of trying to dominate the academic community, one of the key user bases in Korea.
A ministry spokesperson said Microsoft’s tie-in sales strategy could be problematic if it suffocates local competitors’ marketing chances. Microsoft’s excessive combination sales may be hurting fair competition among software vendors, he said.
A Microsoft Korea spokesman claimed that the company’s marketing strategy is being misinterpreted. We introduced the site license program, in which we sell our software package at cheap prices, to help spread the use of genuine software products among students, he said, pointing out that Korean high schools and universities have been a major target of the government’s recent crackdown on software piracy.
Hangul, which markets its own popular word processing software to schools and universities, has also lashed out at local competitor Samsung Electronics which recently also launched a special promotion to schools of its newly developed officeware, Humin Chongum 2000, offering a 70% discount off the book price.
