Why is the piracy windows operating system (Microsoft) so high in Asia??

Asia comprises largely of developing nations so people there have low salaries compared to western countries. Also the defaulters are present in western countries too as they upload large number of pirated torrents. That is why to eradicate the problem microsoft has teamed up with various PC companies and the OS is installed before selling itself and included with the overall cost

The main reason is the price, and the high cost of the American $. In India, the $ value is nearly Rs.45, and if something costs just $100 in the states, the same thing costs nearly Rs.4,500/, which is quite a big money. This is one of the main reason, there is piracy. If the international companies, price their products according to the markets, they can really sweep the markets, The prime example is the car makers in India like Suzuki, who have priced their products so low, that they are having an astonishing 54% market share in the Indian Car market.

I think the main reason could be due to the cost of the software. Not many who use the computer can buy such costly products.. The other reason could be that the control on such piracy is not strict enough... People here usually don't buy a branded PC they would assemble one for them self..

I think this is partly due to the fact that the price of the software or operating system is high. Many people in Asia live on a minimum wage so they can afford a genuine software. Besides internet/computer use is still not as prevalent in Asia as it is in the US. They are still discovering and exploring the computer/internet. Most people in Asia are still using computers as a toy/entertainment such as facebook, chatting, playing games etc and not for serious business.

Hi chhetp1, An average Indian or Asian lower middle class family can not afford to buy a computer. Most of the money they earn go in day to day maintenance, food clothing and shelter, whatever savings they do are spent on doctors and medicines. In this condition when they manage to buy a computer spending about 20 to 25 thousand rupees it is very difficult for them to spend another 5 to 7 K in operating system. most of them even are not even aware that they have to spend for the operating system. The dealer who sells the computer to them gives it to them ready to use. I think to reduce the piracy, MS should bring down their prices in third world drastically. It should be in the range of 1 - 2 k. They can certainly do that and it is going to be a good business sense. They are going to earn much more than what they are doing now.

The piracy is so wide spread that they don't even know that they should pay for software. in fact i have seen people selling about $500,000 worth of software on a couple of dvd's and are sold for peanuts. They take the software for granted as we take the hardware (electronics, pc's) for granted in here.

In my views, there are mainly two reasons. One is that the legal system there is not very effective. Those who produce pirated windows could often escape punishment. So to them producing pirated softwares is a profitable and low risk business. The other reason is that the price of genuine windows in Asia is relatively high comparing with the income. I guess the reason why Microsoft set high price in Asia is that they have to make profits with low sales volume. But the high price encourages more people to buy pirated windows. It's a vicious circle.

Yes you are right that in Asia many peoples used pirated Operating systems and also many companies also used pirated operating systems. I think the rate of original operating system is very high and you can get pirated operating systems CD only in 40 rupees (According to Indian currenc). So every person likes to purchase pirated operating systems for their computers and also it is same as the original.

I think the level or rate of piracy of computer software in Asia is high necause it isn't affordable. Most of the people consider first the basic things they need to buy such as food,shelter and clothing instead of buying genuine computer software they are going to use to their computers. Not only at home people use pirated softwares but also in the internet cafes and offices as well. Those companies are doing cost cutting.For example here in the Philippines the price of the genuine operating system cost P19,000. Imagine if an internet cafe has 30 units of desktop computers, then the internet cafe should buy 30 genuine operating system that cost P57,000. That is really such as huge amount of money. So instead of buying that the internet cafe would just buy a 300-peso-pirated copy of genuine operating system. But for me I still prefer the genuine one even if it's costly because I think buying the pirated copy seems killing the economy.

Reading through this discussion, it seems that everybody basically already pointed out that asian countries would rather use bootleg softwares than genuine apps due to financial problems. after all, not all 3rd world countries are earning per hour and in US dollars. While this might hold true for the majority, another good argument would be because there are programmers out there who can break this system of having to install "genuine" applications. After all, Why pay less, we can you have it for free?