"We are well on our way to be a US$1 billion player here," said McNealy in Beijing, "I do not want to predict when, but it will be very soon."

McNealy said Sun Microsystems' revenues in China rose by three fold last year and the company would continue to enjoy high growth in the future.

Besides promoting Sun's new architecture N1 during his fourth trip to China, McNealy also cast his eyes on the office software market in China.

Sun signed an agreement on Monday with China's second IT distributor PCI-SLR Technology (China) Co Ltd to bundle Sun's office software StarSuite 6.0 with Linux operating system-based computers PCI-SLR sells.

In January, Sun won a contract in the government procurement of Beijing Municipality with StarSuite.

Previously, the third largest domestic computer maker Tsinghua Tongfang also began to bundle StarSuite in all personal computers.

According to Guo Yuanzheng, a business development manager of Sun Microsystems (China), his company aims to take 30 percent of the domestic office software market within two years.

McNealy said on Monday that his company would donate US$2 billion worth of free training and licenses to Chinese universities and students as part of a Sun Academic Initiative.

"Today, we are further expanding this initiative to China, which will benefit some 16 million Chinese university students," McNealy said.

Sun will give free licenses of its Java language, Solaris operating system, Sun One infrastructure software, StarSuite and offer 20 related courses.

The US company also announced on the same day that it would set up a Zhongguancun-Cadence software design college in Beijing with the world's largest electronic design firm Cadence.

Sun will provide some 200 processors and 300 servers and workstations as well as necessary software to the college to train electronic and integrated circuit design engineers in China.

The company will also set up a EDA (electronic design automation) scholarship for Chinese students.

(China Daily March 19, 2003)