Bill Gates to visit Vietnam, push licensed software
HANOI - Bill Gates is set to meet communist Vietnam's leaders to promote licensed Microsoft products in the country where, an anti-piracy industry group has charged, 90 percent of software is counterfeit.
The co-founder and chairman of the US software colossus was due to meet Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong, who are taking time out Saturday from their crucial five-yearly party congress to meet him.
Gates was also due to promote a project to connect rural centres via the Internet, chat with Hanoi university students and meet members of the country's fledgling IT community during the two-day trip starting Friday evening.
His visit comes days after leaders opened the 10th Communist Party Congress beneath a bust of Ho Chi Minh, stressing their aim to turn the developing country into a "knowledge-based economy" and make it an industrialized nation by 2020.
Khai met Gates last year during the first visit by a post-war Vietnamese leader to the United States.
Gates was expected to speak about joint efforts with government bodies and schools and visit a village post office outside Hanoi Saturday to launch a project that uses Vietnamese-made computers with Microsoft programs.
The visit is "a win-win," said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert with the Australian Defence Force Academy.
"He's donating and giving to Vietnam, and there must also be commercial activities involved. For Vietnam wanting to make that leap and develop, that relationship is just where they want to go."
Vietnam's IT sector may still be in its infancy, but the decision by leading chip-maker Intel Corporation this year to build a plant outside the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City has created considerable buzz.
"Bill Gates wants to understand more about Vietnam before setting his investment strategy," said Tran Doan Kim of the Association of Vietnam Software Enterprises. "I think he is visiting because he is curious about Vietnam."
Industry experts warn, however, that Vietnam must rein in piracy if it wants to build a software industry.
Trade group the Business Software Alliance has said over 90 percent of software sold in Vietnam is fake, the highest figure in the world.
In a country where the per capita gross domestic product of 640 dollars matches the retail price of many software packages, most people opt for the pirated versions that sell for less than two dollars.
The United States and other trade partners have pressured Vietnam to step up the protection of intellectual property rights, patents and trademarks in the year it hopes to join the World Trade Organisation.
"Even if nobody can predict what exactly Bill Gates' statements will be, his trip may not have a 100 percent positive effect like Intel's decision," said Christopher Muessel, senior associate with law firm Baker and McKenzie.
"Microsoft is very concerned about counterfeiting, so Bill Gates is likely to say at least that Vietnam needs to go further in protecting intellectual property rights, and that's a negative element. But overall speaking, his trip will surely give a quite positive image of the country."
Microsoft may be losing money now to piracy, but the flood of fake software is, ironically, helping cement its popularity in Vietnam, a highly literate country where two thirds of the population of 83 million is aged under 30.
The Microsoft Corporation chairman is set to speak before more than 1,000 students Saturday at the Hanoi University of Technology.
"Every country in the world wants to have a Bill Gates," said a commentary in the Thanh Nien (Student's Union) daily Friday. "Many young people will wish that one day Vietnam will have a rich and kind man like Bill Gates."
Among many in Vietnam's young urban elite, Gates enjoys almost cult status, said Thayer. "If you go to a Vietnamese bookshop and look what's selling, it's all the books about Bill Gates and the Internet," he said. "He's a kind of guru."
Agence France Presse - April 21, 2006.
Bill Gates arrives in Vietnam
HANOI - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates arrived in Vietnam's capital Friday night for a two-day visit to assess the country's information-technology (IT) potential and call for curbs on pirated software.
Gates, 50, is the latest high-tech heavyweight to pay a call to impoverished Vietnam, which has posted impressive economic growth in the past five years and has ambitions of attracting software outsourcing investment.
He is scheduled to pay a visit to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, whom he met with in Seattle during the premier's US visit last year, and also address students at a university in Hanoi before meeting with Vietnamese IT workers and inspecting a nearby province's e- government initiative.
"The goal of his visit is to see with his own eyes the IT potential of Vietnam," Microsoft Vietnam's director Christophe Desriac told the local Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong in a recent interview.
Vietnam's fledgling high-tech industry got a boost last month with the visit of Intel Corp chairman Craig Barrett, who announced Intel would build a 300-million-dollar chip assembly factory in Ho Chi Minh City.
"The potential of the Vietnamese IT market is very great," Desriac told Tien Phong last week, touting the country's young, highly literate labour force that adds 1 million workers each year.
Vietnamese software and IT companies are growing at a rate of 30 per cent each year, according to government figures.
Still, last year Vietnamese IT companies exported only 70 million dollars of software, compared to India's 12 billion dollars.
Gates is also expected to ask government officials to move to curb software piracy in Vietnam, where 92 per cent of all software sold is estimated to be counterfeit.
Microsoft estimates it loses 55 million dollars in potential revenue to pirated software in Vietnam.
Last month, Vietnam launched a new crackdown on illegally copied software, including Microsoft Windows which sells for hundreds of dollars legally but costs only about 1 dollar for a copy in Hanoi.
Deutsche Presse Agentur - April 21, 2006.
Bill Gates on Vietnam visit
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will arrive in Vietnam in a couple of hours for a visit eagerly awaited by Vietnamese students and the IT industry.
He starts Saturday his one-day visit with meetings with Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong before having a dialogue with IT students at the Hanoi Polytechnic University.
The world’s richest man will also attend a ceremony to sign agreements for supplying software to the Ministry of Finance and the National Steering Committee for Informatics at the Hilton Hotel before having another meeting with the IT community at the Hanoi Theater Hall.
Later, he will leave for Bac Ninh, 30 km from Hanoi, to inaugurate the “One click” project for which Microsoft has provided hardware, software, and Internet connections together with local companies CMS and Vietnam Data Communications Company. There, he will visit a communal cultural center housing computers and the Net.
Gates will hold a press conference before leaving Vietnam late Saturday.
IT entrepreneurs see the big picture
“Gates’ visit will provide a big boost to Vietnam’s image and a strong confirmation of its IT potential, especially software,” Nguyen Huu Le, president of software firm TMA, said.
Ngo Hung Phuong, general director of another firm, Vietnam Paragon Solutions, believed the visit would clear doubts about Vietnam’s IT capability and hoped that Microsoft would build an IT center in Vietnam like in India.
Le Tuong Tung, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City IT association, said the visit would improve the country’s IT industry as “Microsoft may support Vietnam’s effort to develop [it]”.
The immense potential of Vietnam’s fledgling IT industry was highlighted recently when Intel announced a decision to build a US$300 million plant in HCMC. The visit by the head of the world’s largest software firm follows soon after.
By Hoang Ly & Mai Phuong - Thanh Nien - April 21, 2006.
Bill Gates to speak at Hanoi university, students thrilled
A buzz of anticipation is running through the Hanoi Polytechnic University where Bill Gates is due to visit Saturday morning and interact with students.
An IT student, complaining he could not lay his hands on an invitation for the event, said “Getting a ticket to see Bill Gates is much more difficult than for the SEA Games.”
He had pleaded with a close friend and monitor for a ticket, but in vain. “He is a monitor, thus eligible for one ticket. He adamantly refused to sell it to me,” he grumbled.
The university’s vice headmaster, Le Cong Hoa, said only 300 out of 25,000 students would attend the event since the venue could hold just 1,000 people at most.
The remaining seats would be reserved for students from other universities and visitors and state officials, he said.
However, those unable to be present at the event could watch Gates live on two TVs installed for the purpose at the canteen.
The school had earmarked four tickets for each class. With the monitor and youth union secretary both entitled to one, the other two had been decided on merit. A rigorous test had been held with anyone not fluent in English also being eliminated.
After failing to obtain a ticket, junior student Nguyen Trung Kien said indignantly he had to be content with sitting at home.
“My luck ran out”, he told Thanh Nien.
A third-year student said: “I have asked my friends lucky enough to see the famous man in flesh to take his photos so that I can ‘contemplate’ him later.”
The students, who will ask Gates eight questions, have already made a questionnaire and submitted it to the school for short listing and approval.
A student said he wanted to ask the “king of computers” in which area Microsoft would invest in Vietnam and what a Vietnamese student had to do to be able to work for it.
Another student, one of the ten IT students due to be presented a Bill Gates award at the function, said the prize’s monetary value was nothing compared to the honor of shaking hands with the “strange man in our midst”.
Security will be very tight with all students having a day off then. Only those with invitations will be allowed inside the university.
The university’s security staff and 150 students together with local police will stand guard inside and outside the school.
Bill Gates, founder of US software giant Microsoft and the richest man in the world, is expected arrive at 9.30am and leave at 11am. He arrived in Vietnam Friday.
By Hoang Bao - Thanh Nien - April 21, 2006.
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