The Chinese provincial government of the tropical island of Hainan and Microsoft China signed a strategic memorandum of cooperation for Microsoft to build its first Chinese Microsoft Innovation Center in Hainan's international information industrial zone.

Microsoft has launched the Chinese version and professional version of its Surface tablet in China.

During the Mobile World Congress 2013 held in Barcelona, Spain, the Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE launched ZTE Open, its first smartphone product running on Firefox OS.

Taiwanese PC maker Acer said that its notebook shipments are expected to decrease by 10% to 15% for the first quarter of 2013, due to seasonal factors.

Microsoft's official e-commerce website in China has started the sales of the new-generation Office software, with CNY699 for the home and student edition and CNY4,899 for the professional edition.

Microsoft recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the municipal government of Wuxi, Jiangsu province, announcing that the company will invest CNY300 million to build a new technical support center in the city over the next three years.

Jean-Philippe Courtois, Microsoft's global executive vice president and Microsoft worldwide president, apparently recently visited Suning's new headquarters in Nanjing for the first time, and implemented comprehensive talks with Zhang Jindong, chairman of the Chinese consumer electronic retail chain.

Microsoft announced its new product sales strategy in the Chinese market to only provide the electronic online version and OEM pre-installed versions of Windows 8, cutting the sales of packaged operating system sales.

Microsoft's tablet product Surface is expected to be launched in the Chinese market this month, and Suning may become the exclusive retail sales channel for this new product.

Harry Shum, Microsoft's global senior vice president in charge of the development of the company's global search engine, announced that a new version is now available for Bing Chinese search, Cn.bing.com.

Microsoft China recently published its new Chinese development strategy in Beijing, stating that the company plans to hire 1,000 new employees in 2013 financial year and 50% of these new employees will be university graduates.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has announced plans to acquire the MSNLite team, which will focus on the research and development of the PC version of Xiaomi's instant messaging application after the acquisition.

Microsoft has appointed Sandy Gupta as new national technology officer for the China region.

Microsoft and Alipay.com have signed a strategic letter of intent in Beijing, stating that the two parties will jointly develop and distribute services to enhance Internet security and privacy protection for Chinese users.

Cloudary, the Internet literature platform of China's Shanda, has formed a partnership with Microsoft and Nokia to provide technical and device support to Cloudary.