WPS, the office software suite, has found itself at the center of public controversy over accusations of "betraying its users."
On June 21, the topic "Betrayed by WPS" surged to the top of trending searches on Weibo, attracting numerous complaints from netizens about system lag, forced default caching, document loss, and unclear distinctions in membership features.
Weibo's CEO, Wang Gaofei, also joined the discussion, stating that the real betrayal was of the "illusion of domestic substitution." However, Wang later clarified that the critical post was made by his pet "lobster."
It is worth noting that while WPS is often seen as a domestic alternative to Microsoft Office, it was actually the first independently developed word processing system in mainland China and once dominated the domestic market.
In the 1990s, however, Kingsoft opened its WPS format, which had a "natural monopoly" advantage, to Microsoft, allowing the latter to capture the Chinese market with little effort. Consequently, WPS had to completely rewrite its own code from scratch.
With the advent of the mobile internet era, WPS seized the opportunity to successfully achieve an "overtaking on the curve." The rivalry between the two continues into the AI era.
Driven by its core strategies of "AI, Collaboration, and Internationalization," Kingsoft Office delivered an impressive financial report for the first quarter of this year. During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 1.613 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.95%, and recorded a net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.195 billion yuan, surging by 444.97% year-on-year.
However, the sharp increase in Kingsoft Office's net profit was primarily due to significant investment gains from some of its external investment fund projects. Additionally, the growth rate of the company's monthly active devices has also slowed significantly compared to the same period last year.
Accusations of User Betrayal and CEO Commentary
The topic "Betrayed by WPS" trending on Weibo on June 21 sparked widespread discussion among netizens.
According to Tianjin Radio, some users reported that even when WPS is installed on a computer's D or E drive, the software still forces default cache and cloud backup files to be written to the system directory on the C drive in the background. Over time, this fills up the system drive, leading to severe computer slowdowns.
Furthermore, on social media platforms, many users have criticized other aspects of WPS, including frequent membership promotion and renewal advertisements, and issues where default settings surreptitiously change file associations.
As the topic gained traction, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei (also known online as @来去之间) personally entered the fray. In a post, Wang stated that the real betrayal was of the "illusion of domestic substitution."
Wang remarked, "Kingsoft is no longer that small workshop; it is a listed company with a market cap of tens of billions, responsible to its shareholders, and shareholders demand the maximization of user lifetime value. The original narrative of 'making Office affordable for the common people' was its starting point, not its destination."
Subsequently, however, Wang clarified that the critical content was posted by his pet "lobster."
In response to the concentrated complaints about WPS's default storage location, WPS's official customer service stated that WPS defaults to writing temporary files and cloud backup data to the C drive. Users can improve C drive space usage by uninstalling and reinstalling the software or by changing the file storage path.
Regarding the issue of some basic functions being placed behind a paywall, the customer service representative gave the example of the "clear cache" function, stating that bulk, fast clearing indeed requires a paid membership. If users do not wish to pay, they can manually select and clear items individually.
The representative also emphasized that the company has noted user feedback on such issues and would forward them to the product department for follow-up.
It is noteworthy that as early as 2024, WPS was embroiled in controversies over "nested" fees and big data-based price discrimination.
According to Upstream News, a consumer reported at the time that after purchasing a "Super Member Pro" subscription on top of an existing "Super Member" to access AI features, they were soon prompted with a pop-up requiring further payment to upgrade to a "Conference Member" to continue using AI.
Simultaneously, the consumer alleged being subjected to big data "price discrimination" by WPS, claiming the system quoted them a higher upgrade cost to "Conference Member" compared to a colleague with a lower membership tier ("Super Member").
In response to the "nested fees" issue, the WPS hotline customer service previously stated that due to user feedback about too many membership types, the company upgraded and consolidated its membership system in April 2023, introducing "Super Member" and "Super Member Pro."
Regarding the controversy over differing upgrade costs, the hotline representative said, "The upgrade differential amount is indeed calculated by the page system. The system calculates the required differential based on each user's account membership status and remaining membership duration. A longer remaining membership duration generally results in a higher differential to be paid."
Decades of Rivalry with Microsoft and a Past Setback
Tianyancha information shows that the company behind WPS, Beijing Kingsoft Office Software Co., Ltd. (referred to as Kingsoft Office), was registered and established in 2011.
As a globally renowned provider of office software products and services, Kingsoft Office has developed a complete product ecosystem covering individuals, enterprises, and governments. Its core products include WPS Office, the WPS 365 platform for organizations and enterprises, and the intelligent office assistant WPS AI.
It is worth noting that while Kingsoft Office's WPS is often viewed externally as a domestic alternative to Office, it was actually the first independently developed word processing system in mainland China.
According to Science Times, in the 1980s, when China's IT sector was still in its infancy, WPS founder Qiu Bojun decided to write a word processing system that could replace WordStar.
To achieve this goal, Qiu Bojun joined Hong Kong-based Kingsoft, which could provide the necessary development conditions. Subsequently, Qiu secluded himself in a hotel room, focusing entirely on software development, even enduring multiple bouts of hepatitis during this period.
His efforts paid off. In 1988, Qiu Bojun, using a 386 computer, wrote 120,000 lines of code and successfully developed WPS (Word Processing System) 1.0, ushering in the era of Chinese word processing.
With its leading technology, from 1988 to 1996, WPS became synonymous with computers, once holding over 90% of the domestic office software market share.
In 1996, Microsoft, newly arrived in China, proactively approached Kingsoft. The two parties signed an agreement to share file formats. With the help of this agreement, Microsoft captured the Chinese market with almost no effort.
Subsequently, the two engaged in multiple rounds of competition, but WPS failed to reverse the situation. Faced with the reality that "Microsoft Office had become the industry standard," Kingsoft ultimately decided to "discard its own martial arts," completely rewriting the WPS code from scratch.
In 2005, the WPS Office 2005 version was officially released. According to Kingsoft Office's official website, this version achieved a high degree of compatibility with its competitor in terms of file formats, user interface, and secondary development interfaces from the underlying architecture.
Simultaneously, WPS announced that its personal version products would be completely free, marking the official start of its transformation into an internet product.
In 2011, with the arrival of the mobile internet era, WPS launched its mobile version products globally, successfully achieving an "overtaking on the curve." The release of the WPS Office iOS version in 2013 further expanded its application scenarios in the mobile space.
In 2019, Kingsoft Office successfully listed on the STAR Market. At the listing ceremony, Lei Jun, Chairman of Kingsoft, remarked with emotion, "Kingsoft Office's listing on the STAR Market is a victory of persistence. From the founding of Kingsoft in 1988 to today, WPS has walked a full 31 years. Counting from 1999 when we began preparing for listing with Kingsoft Office as the main business entity, we have waited a full 20 years until today."
It is noted that as the AI era progresses, the contest between Word and WPS continues. In March 2023, Microsoft officially announced the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot, fully integrating AI into the Office suite.
In the same year, Kingsoft Office also launched WPS AI, anchored in three strategic directions: AIGC (content creation), Copilot (smart assistant), and Insight (knowledge insight), taking the lead in implementing AI technology in the domestic office field.
Since then, WPS AI has continued to iterate. In July 2025, WPS AI launched version 3.0—WPS Lingxi. This product created a new interaction paradigm of "multi-turn dialogue and controllable modification between humans and AI assistants," providing intelligent agent services within the native Office environment.
Tian Ran, Assistant President of Kingsoft Office, stated, "The release of WPS AI 3.0 indicates that office AI capabilities have been upgraded from tools to AI assistants."
According to B&Y Consulting citing IDC data, based on end-user licenses (including cloud subscriptions and on-premise deployments) in the first quarter of 2026, Kingsoft Office ranked first in the industry with a 32.1% market share, followed by Microsoft and Tencent Docs with 28.5% and 14.3% market shares, respectively.
Strong Q1 Revenue and Profit, but Slowing User Growth
Driven by its three core strategies of "AI, Collaboration, and Internationalization," Kingsoft Office recently delivered a strong first-quarter financial report.
The financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, Kingsoft Office achieved revenue of 1.613 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.95%, and recorded a net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.195 billion yuan, a substantial increase of 444.97% compared to the same period last year.
However, Kingsoft Office emphasized in its report that the significant year-on-year increase in quarterly net profit was mainly due to substantial investment gains from some of its external investment fund projects.
Kingsoft Office stated that given that the valuation of fund-invested enterprises is susceptible to multiple factors such as the macro environment, industry cycles, and business operations, there is a possibility of significant fluctuations or even quarterly losses in related investment returns in the future, which could impact the company's overall net profit level.
By business segment, in the first quarter of 2026, Kingsoft Office's WPS personal business achieved revenue of 975 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%.
Kingsoft Office attributed the steady growth of this business revenue to the company's continuous advancement of AI product iteration and upgrades, deepened refined operations in domestic and overseas markets, and the simultaneous improvement in WPS AI monthly active users, user payment conversion rates, and average revenue per user brought about by the continuous enhancement of AI features.
As of the end of the first quarter, the global monthly active devices for WPS Office reached 672 million, a year-on-year increase of 3.97%. Among these, PC monthly active devices were 328 million, a year-on-year increase of 9.08%, while mobile monthly active devices decreased by 0.47% year-on-year to 344 million, affected by the global decline in smartphone shipments.
Compared with the same period last year, the growth rates of these indicators for Kingsoft Office have shown a significant slowdown. In the first quarter of 2025, the year-on-year growth rates for WPS Office global monthly active devices, PC monthly active devices, and mobile monthly active devices were 7.92%, 11.3%, and 5.14%, respectively.
Analysis suggests that the phase where Kingsoft Office relied on user scale expansion to drive growth has largely ended, and the C-end market is gradually approaching its ceiling.
During the same period, Kingsoft Office's WPS 365 business and WPS software business contributed revenues of 244 million yuan and 347 million yuan to the company, representing year-on-year growth of 60.79% and 32.24%, respectively.
Kingsoft Office stated in its financial report that the high growth of the WPS 365 business benefited from the company's continuous iteration of AI and collaboration product capabilities, steady improvement in the breadth and depth of coverage of private enterprise and local state-owned enterprise clients, and the continuous increase in large-scale customer order volumes.
The WPS software business achieved rapid revenue growth due to the continued release of government and party informatization procurement demand and the continuous iteration, upgrade, and orderly implementation of the company's government AI products.
In terms of expenses, in the first quarter, Kingsoft Office's sales expenses, administrative expenses, and research and development expenses increased by 25.58%, 28.34%, and 21.55% year-on-year to 273 million yuan, 134 million yuan, and 572 million yuan, respectively, somewhat squeezing the company's profit margins.
Despite the strong overall performance in the first quarter, Kingsoft Office's recent performance in the capital market has been less than satisfactory.
According to data from Tonghuashun iFinD, Kingsoft Office's stock price reached a high of 415 yuan per share in January of this year. However, as of the close on June 23, the company's stock price had retreated to 215.43 yuan per share.
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