Gates: Asia to lead future tech innovation

Asia will increasingly become a source of technological innovation, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.

Gates said that the quality of the work being done at Microsoft's research centres in Asia was among the best in the world — to the extent that the company was planning to more than double the staff at its campuses in Beijing and Shanghai.

"And so, not only is Asia benefiting from the use of technology, Asia will be a major source of the breakthroughs and advances in technology," Gates told the annual Boao Forum for Asia on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

Gates referred to a US survey in which many respondents had said the "next Bill Gates" would come from Asia.

"I think that's true — I think it's amazing that that's so well recognised," he said.

Gates was speaking towards the end of a China trip, during which he announced plans to offer a software package called Microsoft Student Innovation Suite at a cost $3 to governments purchasing and giving Windows-based computers to primary and secondary students.

The initiative is part of Microsoft's goal of doubling the number of computer users to two billion by 2015.

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