IBM eager to share technologies with China's Internet sector

IBM Corp wishes the government procurement sector in China could be more open, a company executive said.

Chen Limin, chairman of IBM's China unit said the company is more willing to share its technologies than other foreign firm operating in the sector.

"We have provided more than 9 million lines of source code involving chip-design technology to Chinese companies," he said.

Chen was referring to an initiative launched by IBM this year which is aimed at forming chipmaking coalitions with local partners.

It is hoped the effort will give the company an edge in the market against industry rivals such as Intel Corp and other makers of ARM-based, high-performance processors.

He said IBM is working closely with the Chinese government on a number of what he called thorny issues, from air pollution to improving manufacturing efficiency.

Charlie Dai, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc, said IBM has been finding it difficult to maintain growth in the highly profitable Chinese government procurement market, after the authorities were seen to drop some of the world's leading overseas technology brands from its approved State purchase lists, in favor of local players.

Global majors such as IBM and Oracle Corp have subsequently lost out to State-owned enterprises and government-backed organizations including Inspur Group and Tsinghua Unigroup Co Ltd.

IBM said in October it was now allowing Chinese authorities to vet some of its critical source codes for possible security issues.

Dai from Forrester said the move carried strong symbolic meaning, rather than allaying any national security worries.

"It's actually pretty hard for the government to really analyze millions of lines of source code," he said, adding more overseas firms are likely to make similar moves to win official trust.