Although many economists have lowered their growth projections for Thailand, Andrew McBean, managing director of Microsoft Thailand, said Thais were "early adapters" by nature and his own expectation is that the Kingdom will show a faster shift to Vista than other countries.

IT research firm IDC has forecast that the Thai PC market will grow by 12 per cent with 1.2 million new shipments, which is clearly a good number, McBean said.

McBean declined to say how many Vista systems Microsoft expected to sell in Thailand this year, but said 90 per cent of new machines specified as Vista-ready would be pre-installed with the new OS. According to Microsoft, Vista-capable machines include at least a 800MHz processor, a 512MB system memory, and a graphic processor that is DirectX9-capable.

McBean was speaking at the launch of the new OS, 2007 Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 - presented to business customers in Bangkok yesterday - attended by 3,000 executives from a host of industries. The firm will hold a "general availability" launch for ordinary consumers next week.

McBean said Microsoft would spend US$1 million (Bt35 million) for the launch of the new OS in Thailand during the following weeks.

Unlike its predecessor XP, Vista has been completely built from the ground up. Consumers will clearly see the value and benefits that the new software will bring, he added.

"I promise you from my personal experience, my machine runs faster (after installing the new OS)," he said, adding that he has been testing the Office 2007 himself since six or eight months ago, and has also tested Vista for many months.

"And I love it. My genuine wish is people will love it," he said.

McBean said he expected software piracy to decrease in Thailand because under the

new OS, the difference between genuine and pirated software will be obvious to consumers.

"In the past, there was no difference in user experience between using the genuine software and the pirated one. We put in tons and tons of more value online, so when people come online they will receive a lot of free goodies, such as the Aero graphics feature," he said.

Microsoft Thailand has seen its revenues increase by 25 per cent year on year during the past six months. During the same period, Microsoft's unit software sales to PC-makers in Thailand have risen 56 per cent in volume and 25 per cent in value.

"The OEM (original equipment manufacturer) market has grown by 56 per cent since we has started to notify people they might have illegal software installed in their machines," he said, adding that the enterprise market for Microsoft has also been growing by about 35 per cent.

Accharas Ouysinprasert, country manager of Intel Microelectronics (Thailand), said he expected Vista to boost the consumer PC market, although prices will remain a determining factor. However, as volume grows, the price of higher-specification PCs which can run well on Vista will become lower, he said.

Vista will also have a major impact on the software market, since developers will compete to develop new 64-bit software to run on the new OS, he added.

IDC has forecast that in the first year of release, Windows Vista will be installed on more than 100 million computers worldwide. Nearly 60 per cent of all new PCs in 2007 will run Vista, it said.

Pichaya Changsorn

The Nation