Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it will shut down MSN China, its web portal for China, early next month.
An emailed statement from a company representative said, “Microsoft will be shutting down the MSN portal in China on June 7. Microsoft is deeply committed to China, offering a range of products including Windows 10, cloud services to customers, and hosting the largest research and development center outside of the U.S.”
Microsoft’s main R&D center for the Asia-Pacific region is based in Beijing and the company announced last December that it is building a special version of Windows 10 for use by Chinese government agencies. Microsoft is also currently intent on expanding its cloud computing and enterprise software business in China. It announced last month that it now has 65,000 corporate customers for Microsoft Azure, up from 50,000 about a year ago.
China’s cloud market presents an exciting opportunity–Forrester estimates it will grow to $3.8 billion by 2020, more than double its size in 2015–but Microsoft Azure has to hold its own against competing services from like Alibaba’s cloud unit, Tencent, and Amazon Web Services.
(Source: Tech Crunch )