Shareware: From China to International Market

Jerry Zhou, a Chinese programmer, found a huge potential market in “burning MP3s onto audio CDs” in an accidental opportunity in 2000. In the past years, a music lover may pay thirteen to twenty dollars for a CD, which are expensive to get music for most people. Or others may spend hours converting MP3s to .wavs with minimal success. Then Jerry Zhou sent emails to more than 50 shareware developers abroad for the purpose to explore the potential market space for shareware. Jerry Zhou confirmed his idea after he got the replies from those shareware developers. Afterwards, he launched the website of zy2000.com and developed the shareware of MP3 CD Maker. Jerry Zhou made a great success. After that, as the growth of demand and orders on the shareware of MP3 CD Maker, he left China for America and devoted himself to developing and marketing the English version of this shareware.

In 2000, a Report Called "Go to America and Make a Buck" Got Particular Attention in the Shareware Community

Author: baiyuzhong

Source: Programmer Magazine in 2000

Link: http://history.programmer.com.cn/12105/

Jerry Zhou did some statistics on the sales of his shareware software in August, which showed us which countries are people from who bought the shareware. Since the shareware is only in English version, there was some limitations in the statistics:

USA (1,813 sets), Canada (98 sets), UK (80 sets), Netherlands (32 sets), Australia (32 sets), Germany (17 sets), Norway (17 sets), Spain (16 sets), France (15 sets). Sales below 15 sets: Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, South Korea, New Zealand, Argentina, Israel, Finland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Guam, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, united Arab emirates, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Greece, Mariana, Portugal, Slovenia, el Salvador, Nicaragua, panama, Thailand, Ukraine, Uganda, Venezuela.

Browse about the names of these countries and regions. This is the real "international market" brought by the Internet. View The Original Article



In 2004, Jerry Zhou Was Selected by Programmer Magazine as One of the 20 Leaders in Software Development in China

Source: Sina Science and Technology

Link: http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2004-01-08/1648279559.shtml

Selected reason: The Forerunner of Making Shareware from China to International Market

In October 2001, Jerry Zhou made a long-distance call from the United States and talked a lot about his idea for shareware. At that time, he was full of the joy of discovering a “New Continent”, but also eager to share his experiences with Chinese programmers. With the publicity of the media, a large number of Chinese programmers, including students without graduation and those who had just learned Visual Basic for two or three days began developing shareware. As well as the international market pressure, with a growing crop of shareware similar to MP3 CD Maker, the sales of Jerry Zhou’s shareware were dropped. But Jerry Zhou never regretted sharing and doing so.

Now there are a large number of sharewares in the international market, among which China, Russia and the United States occupies the largest share. Most of the shareware developers have gained rich life through this way, but there are also others who have not brought the desired “harvest”. However, Jerry Zhou, as the founder of making shareware from China to international market, is called "the boss" by many programmers. Such influence is worth recording in the history of software development in China. View The Original Article



The Follow-up of ZY2000.com

As time goes on, zy2000.com is out of maintenance and domain name was expired and registered by professional domain traders. Now, as beneficiaries of this website at that time, we bought back this domain name and show our respect to Jerry Zhou and the first generation of overseas programmers of China.