China's software piracy declined by 3% in 2011

Less than 40 percent of software installed on computers in China was pirated in 2011, a decline of 3 percentage points from the previous year.

The software piracy rate dropped from 41 percent in 2010 to 38 percent last year, the seventh year that the figure declined, according to data released by the Chinalabs.com, a consulting and research company.

As for categories, information security software piracy declined the most - from 45 percent in 2010 to 39 percent last year - followed by office and operating system piracy, according to the annual report on China's software piracy, conducted by the company.

"China's software piracy rate has been continuously decreasing over the past seven years, which can be seen as a big victory of authorized software across the country," Wang Junxiu, founder of the company, told China Daily after the news conference of the report.