SoftPedia embarks on Chinese quest

The most frequently accessed Romanian website, the free software library SoftPedia, with more than 250,000 visitors a day, will enter the online market of China, where it will launch a special version of its www.softpedia.com portal. “We intend to tap into new markets by developing the Chinese version of the website. If the Romanian market is sufficiently developed, we will create an exclusive Romanian version,” general manager Catalin Garmacea told Ziarul Financiar. “Going to the Asian market has become a trend lately, and China”s population is in excess of one billion inhabitants, which stimulates us to approach a strategy for this area,” SoftPedia”s official added. Launched in 2001, the Romanian website has become a business with support from Google, world”s leading search engine, which posts online advertising. The explanation behind the advertising supplied by Google is that those most interested in the software provided by softpedia.com seem to be the Americans, who account for more than 45% of the total number of visitors. Revenues on the domestic market are quite low at the moment, although nearly 10% of SoftPedia.ro”s visitors are Romanians. ZF