China’s drive to replace foreign hardware and software with domestic alternatives has achieved a milestone, as WPS Office – a long-existing local substitute for Microsoft Office – achieved 100 million daily active users.
The desktop version of WPS, marketed as being “highly compatible” with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, is accessed by more than 100 million devices in China every day, according to a post published on Monday by developer Kingsoft Office Software.
Microsoft Office remains popular in China. But as Beijing’s cybersecurity concerns have grown amid tensions with Washington, WPS has become more widely used in strategically important sectors, such as government, finance and telecommunications.
Launched in 1988 – five years after Microsoft released Word – WPS was the mainland’s first home-grown Chinese-language word-processing system. It was not until 1992 that Microsoft set up operations in China, allowing WPS ample time to establish a loyal user base.
