Ok, so I was interested being the skeptic I am. I thought i would give this Kingsoft Office or Kingsoft Research KS09 ) a run for its little money. 100 days later and I am happy to announce I have just purchased my copy yesterday. It opened without problem all of my existing documents perfectly whilst preserving a familiar interface making it easy to use. Everyone interested in purchasing an office suite should at least take a peek.
These guys must have took the bull by the horns as soon as an opportunity arose to construct such a challenge to conventional belief.

Up to now the Chinese haven't had much of an incentive to develop alternatives to MSFT products. Microsoft has given them that incentive. Way to go.....

I don't know Evermore Office 2009 and Kingsoft Office but I know RedOffice 4.0, a Chinese software which is less expensive than Microsoft Office 2007.

http://en.redoffice.com.cn/

I fully expect China to have total control over its own software market in the future.
After all, I don't see how Microsoft can do better in making software compatible with their way of working and their culture.
And I fail to see why the Chinese should be enamoured with Western software. They are just coming to the Computer age, there is no pro-Microsoft opinion that is entrenched like it is over here.
It will be easy for China to persuade developers to work for their own - why develop for a foreign market of around a billion when you have more than that available in your own language ?

I wish the Europeans would show that much initiative! Instead, the EC is wasting time with fining Microsoft, for less than what Microsoft settles with companies like Sun, and the European Parliament appears to be completely incompetent when it comes to important issues like putting an end to software patents. Not to mention the role of the Europeans in the ISO OOXML debacle.



"Evermore Office 2009 reportedly sells to individual users for $99, which is much less than the cost of Microsoft Office." errrrrrrrrrrr, ya cant get much cheaper than free, as in pirated, which the vast majority of office applications are in china :O)

surely Evermore office is so popular in china cos they use their own document protocol, Uniform Office Format (UOF). which the government came up with so they could say up you M$hite, open office and the capatalist western world as a whole :O)