Microsoft Plans to Hire 33% More Engineers in China [View All]

Source: Bloomberg News

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, plans to employ 33 percent more engineers in China by the end of the fiscal year to boost research and development.

The company will add 1,000 engineers by the end of June next year, Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft China, said in Beijing today. About 10 percent will be doing research and the rest mostly in product development, he said.

The Redmond, Washington-based software maker has about 3,000 research engineers in China at present, the highest number outside the U.S., Zhang said.

Microsoft is stepping up research operations in a market where about 82 percent of business software is pirated, and more than 90 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people don't own computers. Piracy cost business software makers about $1.9 billion of lost revenue in 2006, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a lobby group of copyright holders.

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