ST. PETERSBURG, June 5 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian communications minister said Friday that the Federal Antimonopoly Service's "interest" in the Microsoft corporation is reasonable.
The Russian antitrust service (FAS) launched an investigation on Thursday on suspicion of ungrounded reduction of Windows XP operation system supplies, both separately and pre-installed, to Russia by the corporation, as well as of pricing violations.
"I believe this is reasonable," Igor Shchegolev said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, adding that his ministry discussed the issue with the corporation in December last year.
"We met with Microsoft in December and told them about this problem from the point of view of state bodies: constant change of the operating system does not benefit consumers. We recommended they consider the questions the FAS raised before them now," the minister said.
He said the ministry is continuing dialogue with Microsoft on the issue. The service will consider the case July 24.
The service's experts have established that Microsoft dominates the operation system market. Microsoft officially confirmed its decision to stop retail sales of Windows XP from June 30, 2008, but demand for XP is still high although users are gradually switching to Windows Vista.
The head of Microsoft Russia, Nikolai Pryanishnikov, told journalists at the forum that Microsoft is ready to fulfill grounded demands of the antimonopoly service and hopes it will avoid court processes with the service.
"We are fully ready for cooperation, we are ready to fulfill the regulator's demands that will be grounded and in the interest of consumers," he said. "I hope no court processes will be needed. We will do everything to avoid it and resolve the issue with the regulator by constructive means."
"My experience of dealing with the regulator, specifically, the antimonopoly service, shows that the antimonopoly service is headed by very reasonable people," he said, adding that it was normal practice when old products were discontinued following the appearance of new ones.
