The Business Software Alliance, a United States based trade group, claims that 87-92 percent of all business computer programs used in Russia are bootlegged - a piracy rate second only to China's. Microsoft sells c. $80- 100 million a year in the Russian Federation and the CIS.
Had it not been for piracy, its revenues could have climbed well above the $1 billion mark.
According to Moscow Times and RosBalt, Microsoft's sales in Russia almost doubled in the last 12 months and it has decided to expand into the regions outlying Moscow and into Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Yet, the company's attempts to stamp out illicit copying in the last years of Russian president Boris Yeltsin's regime - including a much publicized visit by Bill Gates and a series of televised raids on disk stamping factories - floundered and yielded a wave of xenophobic indignation.
Still, central and eastern Europe is a natural growth market for the likes of Microsoft. The region is awash with highly qualified, talented, and - by Western measure - sinfully cheap experts. Purchasing power has increased precipitously in countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, parts of Russia, and Croatia.
Both governments and businesses are at the initial stages of investing in information technology infrastructure.
Technological leapfrogging rendered certain countries here more advanced than the West in terms of broadband and wireless networks.
XLV. NGOs - The Self-Appointed Altruists
Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV's, sport $3000 laptops and PDA's. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional altruists.
Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency.