Produced by Leida Finance, Text by Zhou Hui, Edited by Meng Shuai

WPS finds itself embroiled in controversy after being accused of 'backstabbing users.'

On June 21st, the topic 'Betrayed by WPS' trended on Weibo, drawing roast [complaints] from many netizens about issues such as system lag, default caching, document loss, and unclear membership feature divisions.

Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei also joined the discussion, stating that 'the real betrayal is the illusion of 'domestic substitution.'' However, Wang later clarified that the roast [complaints] were posted by his 'lobster' [a reference to an AI or alternate account].

It's worth noting that despite being widely regarded as a 'domestic alternative' to Office, WPS is actually the first independently developed word processing system in mainland China and once dominated the domestic market.

However, in the 1990s, Kingsoft opened its originally 'naturally monopolistic' WPS format to Microsoft, allowing Microsoft to effortlessly capture the Chinese market. As a result, WPS had to overhaul its codebase from scratch.

With the advent of the mobile internet era, WPS seized the opportunity to achieve a ' Overtaking on a curved road ' [overtaking around a bend]. In the AI era, the rivalry between the two continues.

Thanks to the company's core strategic layout [layout] of 'AI, Collaboration, and Internationalization,' Kingsoft Office delivered a strong financial report in the first quarter of this year. During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 1.613 billion yuan, up 23.95% year-on-year, and recorded a net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.195 billion yuan, soaring 444.97% year-on-year.

However, Kingsoft Office's soaring net profit was primarily due to significant investment gains from some of its externally invested fund projects during the period. Additionally, the growth rate of the company's monthly active devices slowed significantly compared to the same period last year.

WPS Accused of 'Backstabbing Users,' Weibo CEO Joins the Fray

On June 21st, the topic 'Betrayed by WPS' trended on Weibo, sparking heated discussions among netizens.

According to Tianjin Broadcasting, some netizens reported that even when WPS is installed on the D or E drive of a computer, the software still forcibly writes default cache and cloud backup files into the system directory of the C drive in the background. Over time, these files quickly fill up the system disk, leading to severe computer lag.

In addition, many netizens on social media roast [complained] about other issues with WPS, including frequent membership promotion and renewal ads, as well as the software's default settings secretly altering association methods.

As the topic continued to gain traction, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei (@ Between coming and going ) personally joined the discussion. In his post, Wang stated that the real betrayal is the illusion of 'domestic substitution.'

Wang said, 'Kingsoft is no longer the small workshop it once was. It's a publicly traded company with a market cap of tens of billions, responsible to its shareholders, who demand maximization of user lifetime value. The narrative of 'making Office affordable for ordinary people' was its starting point, not its endpoint.'

However, Wang later clarified that the roast [complaints] were posted by his 'lobster' [a reference to an AI or alternate account].

In response to the Centralized roast [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 mitigate C drive storage occupy [usage] by uninstalling and reinstalling the software or changing the file storage path.

Regarding the issue of some basic software features being placed in the paid membership area, the customer service representative said that taking the 'clear cache' function as an example, batch and rapid clearing does require a paid membership. However, users can also manually clear files one by one if they do not wish to pay.

At the same time, the customer service representative emphasized that they have taken note of such user feedback and will submit these issues to the product department for follow-up handling.

It's worth noting that as early as 2024, WPS was embroiled in controversies over 'nested' fees and big data 'price discrimination.'

According to Upstream News, at the time, some consumers reported that after purchasing a 'Super Membership' for WPS, they paid extra for a 'Super Membership Pro' with AI capabilities. However, they were soon prompted via pop-up to upgrade to a 'Grand Membership' to continue using AI features.

At the same time, the consumer also claimed to have experienced big data 'price discrimination' from WPS: the cost of upgrading to a 'Grand Membership' pushed to them by the system was even higher than that pushed to a colleague with a lower membership tier ('Super Membership').

In response to the 'nested' fee issue, WPS's hotline customer service previously stated that after receiving user feedback about the multitude of membership tiers, the company upgraded and consolidated its membership system in April 2023, introducing the 'Super Membership' and 'Super Membership Pro.'

Regarding the controversy over differing upgrade fees for different memberships, the hotline customer service representative said, 'The amount of the upgrade price difference is indeed calculated by the page system. The system calculates the required price difference based on each user account's membership status and remaining membership duration. The longer the remaining membership duration, the higher the corresponding price difference.'

Decades of Rivalry with Microsoft, Once 'Robbed' by the Opponent

According to Tianyancha information, WPS is owned by Beijing Kingsoft Office Software Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Kingsoft Office'), which was registered and established in 2011.

As a globally renowned provider of office software products and services, Kingsoft Office has formed a complete product ecosystem covering individuals, enterprises, and governments. Its core products include WPS Office, WPS 365—a new productivity platform for organizations and enterprises—and WPS AI, an intelligent office assistant.

It's worth noting that despite WPS, developed by Kingsoft Office, often being regarded by the outside world as a 'domestic alternative' to Office, it is actually the first independently developed word processing system in mainland China.

According to Science Times, in the 1980s, when China's IT industry was still in its infancy, WPS founder Qiu Bojun decided to develop a word processing system that could replace WordStar.

To achieve this goal, Qiu joined Hong Kong-based Kingsoft, which could provide the necessary development conditions. Subsequently, Qiu secluded himself in a hotel to focus on software development, even suffering from hepatitis multiple times during the process.

His efforts paid off. In 1988, Qiu successfully developed WPS (Word Processing System) 1.0 by typing 120,000 lines of code on a 386 computer, ushering in the era of Chinese word processing.

With its leading technology, WPS became synonymous with computers between 1988 and 1996, capturing over 90% of the domestic office software market share at one point.

In 1996, Microsoft, newly arrived in China, proactively approached Kingsoft, and the two sides signed an agreement to mutually share file formats. With the help of this agreement, Microsoft effortlessly captured the Chinese market.

Subsequently, the two sides engaged in multiple competitions, but WPS was unable to turn the tide. Faced with the fact that 'Microsoft Office had become the industry standard,' Kingsoft ultimately decided to 'scrap its martial arts' and completely overhaul WPS's codebase.

In 2005, WPS Office 2005 was officially released. According to Kingsoft Office's official website, this version achieved a high degree of compatibility with competitors in terms of file formats, user interfaces, and secondary development interfaces from the underlying architecture.

At the same time, WPS announced that its personal version would be completely free, marking its official transition to an internet product.

In 2011, with the advent of the mobile internet era, WPS released its mobile version globally, successfully achieving a ' Overtaking on a curved road ' [overtaking around a bend]. In 2013, the release of the WPS Office iOS version further expanded its mobile application scenarios.

In 2019, Kingsoft Office successfully listed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board. At the listing ceremony, Lei Jun remarked with emotion, 'Kingsoft Office's listing on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board is a victory for persistence. From its founding in 1988 to today, WPS has come a long way over 31 years. From preparing to list as Kingsoft Office in 1999 to today, we've waited 20 years.'

Leida Finance noticed that as the AI era dawned, the rivalry between Word and WPS continued. 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 introduced WPS AI, targeting three strategic directions: AIGC (content creation), Copilot (intelligent assistant), and Insight (knowledge insight), and took the lead in implementing AI technology in the domestic office sector.

Subsequently, WPS AI underwent continuous iteration. In July 2025, WPS AI launched version 3.0—WPS Lingxi—which created a new interaction paradigm of 'multi-round dialogues between humans and AI assistants with controllable modifications,' providing intelligent agent services in the native Office environment.

Tian Ran, Assistant President of Kingsoft Office, said, 'The release of WPS AI 3.0 indicates that the capabilities of office AI have evolved from tools to AI assistants.'

According to Boyan Consulting, citing IDC data, in the first quarter of 2026, Kingsoft Office ranked first in the industry with a 32.1% market share based on end-user authorization numbers (including cloud subscriptions and on-premises deployments), followed by Microsoft and Tencent Docs with 28.5% and 14.3%, respectively.

Q1 Sees 'Double-Digit Growth in Revenue and Profit,' but Monthly Active Device Growth Slows

Driven by its three core strategies of 'AI, Collaboration, and Internationalization,' Kingsoft Office recently delivered a strong first-quarter financial report.

The financial report showed that in the first quarter of this year, Kingsoft Office achieved revenue of 1.613 billion yuan, up 23.95% year-on-year, and recorded a net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.195 billion yuan, soaring 444.97% year-on-year.

However, Kingsoft Office emphasized in the financial report that the significant year-on-year growth in the company's single-quarter net profit was primarily due to substantial investment gains from some of its externally invested fund projects during the period.

Kingsoft Office stated that given that the valuations of the fund's invested enterprises are susceptible to multiple factors such as the macro environment, industry cycles, and corporate operations, there is a possibility of significant fluctuations or even single-quarter losses in related investment gains in future quarters, which could impact the company's overall net profit level.

In terms of business segments, in the first quarter of 2026, Kingsoft Office's WPS personal business achieved revenue of 975 million yuan, up 13.8% year-on-year.

Regarding this, Kingsoft Office stated that the steady growth in revenue from this business was primarily due to the company's continuous efforts to iterate and upgrade AI products, deepen refined operations in domestic and overseas markets, and the simultaneous improvement in WPS AI's monthly active users, user payment conversion rates, and average revenue per user driven by the continuous improvement of AI features.

As of the end of the first quarter, WPS Office had 672 million monthly active devices globally, up 3.97% year-on-year. Among them, the PC version had 328 million monthly active devices, up 9.08% year-on-year, while the mobile version had 344 million monthly active devices, down 0.47% year-on-year due to the decline in global smartphone shipments.

Compared to the same period last year, the growth rates of the aforementioned indicators for Kingsoft Office all showed a noticeable decline. In the first quarter of 2025, the year-on-year growth rates for WPS Office's global monthly active devices, PC version monthly active devices, and mobile version monthly active devices were 7.92%, 11.3%, and 5.14%, respectively.

Some analysts pointed out that Kingsoft Office's phase of relying 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, respectively, up 60.79% and 32.24% year-on-year.

Kingsoft Office stated in the financial report that the rapid growth of the WPS 365 business was due to the company's continuous iteration of AI and collaboration product capabilities, the steady increase in coverage breadth and depth of private enterprise and local state-owned enterprise customers, and the sustained increase in large-scale customer orders.

The WPS software business, on the other hand, achieved rapid revenue growth due to the continuous release of government and enterprise information technology innovation procurement demand, as well as the continuous iteration and orderly implementation of the company's government AI products.

In terms of expenses, in the first quarter, Kingsoft Office's selling 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 overall strong performance in the first quarter, Kingsoft Office's recent performance in the capital markets has been less than satisfactory.

According to iFinD data from Tonghuashun, in January this year, Kingsoft Office's stock price once reached a high of 415 yuan per share, but as of the close on June 23rd, the stock price had fallen to 215.43 yuan per share.

Leida Finance will continue to monitor the future development of Kingsoft Office and WPS.