Microsoft upset by Asian initiative

A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows would raise concerns over fair competition, says the world's No 1 software maker.

Japan, the world's second-largest economy, made a proposal at an Asian economic summit to build an inexpensive and trustworthy open-source operating system that would be based on a system such as Linux.

"We'd like to see the market decide who the winners are in the software industry," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft's Tokyo-based director for Government affairs in Asia.

Japan's computer and consumer hardware industry has long searched for an alternative to Windows, which it contends has too much control over the personal computer and electronics industry.