微软公司董事会主席比尔·盖茨12月7日在新德里表示，该公司计划在未来3至4年内在印度增加3000个职位，几乎使其现有职位数翻一番。

    据美联社12月7日报道，盖茨在一个印度企业领袖论坛上说：“目前我们在印度拥有4000名员工。在未来3年到4年之中，我们将使其增加到7000人。”微软一直以来将印度——这个拥有10亿人口、经济蓬勃发展的国家，视为潜在的巨大市场。此行是他第4次到访印度。他将会见印度高官、企业领袖及程序开发商，并考察一项总额达4亿美元的投资计划，该计划是微软公司在3年前宣布的。

    在宣布扩员计划的同时，盖茨没有透露是否打算新增投资。但是，印度工业官员期待他在当天晚些时候能就此事表态。

    今年早些时候，微软在印度南部城市海得拉巴设立了研究中心，成为该公司全球范围内第4个类似机构。公司还计划下个月在印度科技中心城市班加罗尔开设创新中心，使其成为推动小型企业内员工教育、企业主发展和技术革新工作的全球网络的组成部分。

    盖茨还表示，微软在印度开展业务的目标是不断缩小数字鸿沟，公司为穷人生产的产品不仅要使他们买得起，而且还要能够解决他们的实际需求。他举的例子包括生产能够充当电脑的手机，以及开发能够“听懂”使用者语音指令的电脑等。

    尽管印度拥有数量庞大的技术工人储备，供西方国家公司雇佣以从事软件相关工作，但该国仍有许多人没有条件接触电脑或互联网。印度超过35％的人口不会读写，有将近4亿人每天收入低于1美元。尽管这样，足足3亿人口的中产阶级和迅猛发展的经济仍使微软公司相信，印度是西方企业的巨大市场。

    盖茨此行正值越来越多的印度公司转向低成本的开放源代码操作系统。这种操作系统不仅允许使用者复制、分发和修改程序代码，而且与微软视窗等受专利保护的操作系统相比，价格还相对便宜。受专利保护的操作系统还不允许用户修改其保密的代码。

    尽管无法得到确切数字，但《网路杂志》（Network Magazine）今年6月对印度公司进行的一项调查显示，接近40％的受访企业使用Linux（开放源代码操作系统的一种）。这家杂志调查了340家公司，但没有提供统计的误差幅度。

    然而，微软公司坚持说，该公司旗下的服务器操作系统的市场占有率从2004年早些时候的57％，增长到2005年末的65％。在上一次造访印度时，盖茨对Linux操作系统带来的威胁不以为然。 

    Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Wednesday that his company plans to add 3,000 jobs in India over the next three to four years, nearly doubling its workforce here.

    "We have 4,000 professionals in India today, we will increase it to 7,000 over the next three to four years," Bill Gates told a forum of Indian business leaders.

    Microsoft has long viewed India, a country of 1 billion people with a robust economy, as a potentially huge market.

    In his fourth trip to the nation, Gates was to meet with senior Indian officials, business leaders and programmers and take stock of a $400-million investment program the company announced for India three years ago.

    Gates didn't say if expanding staff in India would also involve new investments, but industry officials expect him to make some announcement later Wednesday.

    Earlier this year, the company opened a research center in the southern city of Hyderabad, the fourth such Microsoft facility worldwide. Next month, the company plans to open an innovation center in Bangalore, India's technology hub, that will be part of a global network promoting education, entrepreneurial development and innovations by small businesses.

    Gates said the company's efforts in India were aimed at narrowing the digital divide, by creating products that are not only affordable to the poor people but also address their unique needs.

    Some of the ideas he raised included making a mobile phone work as a computer, and a television as a monitor. How about developing computers that respond to speech _ and not just in English _ rendering keyboards unnecessary?

    These are the challenges of the future, Gates said, and "India is a place where breakthroughs like these are necessary and will take place."

    Although scores of Western companies have tapped India's large pool of technical workers by increasingly hiring either Indians or Indian firms to handle their software-related work, a large number of people in the country have no access to computers or the Internet.

    More than 35 percent of the country's population can't read or write and nearly 400 million people earn less than a dollar a day. Still, a 300-million strong middle class and the country's booming economy make India a big market for western firms, including Microsoft.

    Gates' visit comes at a time when many Indian companies are increasingly turning toward open source operating systems, particularly Linux, as a low-cost alternative to Windows.

    Open source operating systems allow users to copy, distribute and modify the program's code, and are relatively cheap compared to proprietary systems like Windows, which does not allow users to modify its secret code.

    While exact figures are hard to come by, a survey of Indian companies by Network Magazine released in June found that nearly 40 percent use Linux to run their servers.

    The magazine polled 340 companies, and offered no margin of error.

    However, Microsoft insists its market share in server operating systems grew from 57 percent in early 2004 to 65 percent in late 2005. During his previous visits, Gates has downplayed the Linux threat.