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Trend Micro eyeing China

The world's leading anti-virus software firm, Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技), has big plans to boost sales by focusing on the post-WTO China market, a company executive said yesterday.

"I estimate by year-end our sales in the China market will rise nearly 10-fold over last year," said Ralph Liu (劉家雍), vice president of Trend Micro Asia Pacific.

Liu is banking on growing awareness of information security in the Asia-Pacific region, and especially the quickly developing China market.

Currently, company sales in China are just several hundred thousand US dollars, and Liu expects that figure may jump to several million dollars soon, he said.

Liu made the comments yesterday at a ceremony to introduce himself as the company's new Asia Pacific vice president.

Before joining Trend Micro, Liu was vice president of the "new business architecture" office at Acer Inc (宏電). Prior to that position, he spent five years with Novell Ltd Taiwan as director for Greater China, overseeing five regional offices.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed firm reported sales of 6.626 billion yen (US$51 million) for the first quarter of the year through March, a rise of 47 percent over the same period last year.

Of that figure, 85 percent of sales come from providing security software to enterprises, and the remaining 15 percent comes from selling anti-virus software, such as PC-Cillin, to end-users.

Japan accounts for 40 percent of Trend Micro's sales, followed by 25 percent for the US, 23 percent for Europe and 9 percent for the Asia-Pacific region.

Liu plans to upgrade his sales force in Asia to boost revenue.

"Starting from this year, we'll put more effort into the China market and predict by 2005 about 15 percent of our sales will come from Asia," Liu said.

To get a chunk of the market, Trend Micro will focus on corporate clients. "The piracy problem in China is very serious, thus we have decided to sell products to business users rather than individual users," Liu explained.

An industry pundit said Trend Micro's strategy is on the right track. "Earning money from businesses is more stable and profitable, since companies like Trend Micro also make money from added service charges and contract renewal fees," said George Wu (吳裕良), a software industry analyst at Primasia Securities Co.

Wu said Trend Micro's decision is a timely one. "With China entering the WTO, the piracy issue should be better controlled and software providers can receive better protection," Wu said.

According to Wu, as of the end of last year about 90 percent of software in use in China were pirated copies.

South Korea is Trend Micro's second market in Asia. "With South Korea's dense broadband market, public demand for anti-hacker and anti-virus software is set to rise as well," Liu said.
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