By Ben Charny
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- For Dell Inc. (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), China's latest Web-filtering dilemma has become a case of hurry up, and now wait about a year, say analysts.
China's so-called "Green Dam" policy requires that each personal computer shipped to China include a particular kind of Web-filtering software. The edict caught many PC makers off guard when it first surfaced in a June 7 report in The Wall Street Journal. Among the many gripes coming from PC makers is how little time they had to comply before the edict went into effect July 1.
Major Asian-based computer makers have since capitulated, even though the government abruptly backed down on the eve of the mandate going into effect. Acer Inc. (ACEIY) and Sony Corp (SNE) began shipping PCs with the software on board. Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVGY) also will offer the software. But Dell and H-P seem intent instead to wait out the government, and any lingering diplomatic efforts to have the policy scrubbed.
A state-run newspaper reported Thursday that the government plans to one day enforce the policy but didn't provide a timeline for when the policy might be in place.
Typically, the Chinese government takes about a year to tinker with an unpopular technology policy criticized by Western companies, say analyst. And Green Dam has all those trappings. Rumors circulating in China also suggest it will take a year.
That leaves H-P and Dell plenty of time to continue doing business in the country on terms that are more suitable to them.
"I see this getting resolved sometime over the next 12 months, simply because that's just how these things usually work out," said David Wolf, chief executive of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based marketing strategy firm.
Meanwhile, pressure from the West continues. Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association trade group, is traveling to China this week for a CEA trade show in China, and he plans to bring up the controversy in his keynote speech.
"I will applaud them for their delay," he said. "But I will be talking about the Green Dam thing. I will talk about it quietly."
H-P didn't have an immediate comment for this story beyond one supporting diplomatic efforts underway that it has been circulating for weeks. A Dell spokesman said the company isn't including the software in computers it ships to China, and wouldn't speculate on future Green Dam actions.
-By Ben Charny, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-8230; ben.charny@dowjones.com