WPS was involved in public controversy due to accusations of "backstabbing users." On June 21, the topic of "Backstabbed by WPS" became a hot search topic, attracting many netizens to complain about its problems such as system lags, default caching, document loss, and unclear membership function partitions.
Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei also participated in the discussion, saying that "what is really being stabbed in the back is the illusion of 'domestic substitution'." However, Wang Gaofei later said that the above-mentioned complaints were made by his "lobster".
It is worth mentioning that although many people regard it as a "domestic alternative" to Office, WPS is actually the first independently developed word processing system in mainland China, which once swept the domestic market.
However, in the 1990s, Kingsoft opened its WPS format, which had a "natural monopoly" advantage, to Microsoft, allowing Microsoft to seize the Chinese market with almost no effort. To this end, WPS had to overthrow and rewrite its own code.
With the advent of the mobile Internet era, WPS seized this opportunity and successfully achieved "overtaking in corners". In the AI era, the “competition” between the two sides continues.
Thanks to the layout of the company's core strategy of "AI, collaboration, and internationalization", Kingsoft Office delivered an eye-catching financial report in 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%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 2.195 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 444.97%.
However, Kingsoft Office's net profit soared, mainly due to the large investment income generated by some of the company's external investment fund projects in this period. In addition, the company's monthly active device growth rate has also declined significantly compared with the same period last year.
WPS was accused of "backstabbing users", and Weibo CEO complained about his "end"
On June 21, the topic "Backstabbed by WPS" became a hot search topic on Weibo, triggering heated discussions among many netizens.
According to Tianjin Broadcasting, some netizens reported that even if WPS is installed on the D drive or E drive of the computer, the software will still forcibly write the default cache and cloud backup files to the system directory of the C drive in the background. Over time, the system disk will soon be filled up with these files, causing serious computer freezes.
In addition, many netizens on social platforms have complained about other aspects of WPS, including frequent membership promotion and renewal advertisements, and software default settings that secretly tamper with association methods.
As related topics continue to ferment, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei also participated in the discussion "in person". Wang Gaofei said in a blog post that what was really being stabbed in the back was the illusion of "domestic substitution."
Wang Gaofei said, "Kingsoft is no longer that small workshop. It is a listed company with a market value of tens of billions. It has responsibilities to shareholders, and shareholders want to maximize the user life cycle value. The original narrative of 'making Office affordable for the common people' was its starting point, not its end."
However, Wang Gaofei later said that the above-mentioned complaints were made by the "lobster" he raised.
In response to netizens' complaints about the default storage location of WPS, WPS official customer service responded that WPS will write temporary files and cloud backup data to the C drive by default. Users can uninstall and reinstall the software, or change the file storage path to improve the storage space occupied by the C drive.
As for the issue that some basic functions of the software are included in the membership payment area, the customer service said that taking the "clear cache" function as an example, members must pay to clean up quickly in batches. If you don't want to pay, you can also manually check the cleanup individually.
At the same time, the customer service also emphasized that it has paid attention to such problems reported by users and will submit the above feedback to the product department for follow-up processing.
It is worth mentioning that as early as 2024, WPS was involved in disputes over "matryoshka-style" charging and big data "killing".
According to upstream news, at that time, some consumers reported that they had added money to purchase the "Super Member Pro" with AI functions on the basis of the WPS "Super Member", but soon after they were reminded by a pop-up window that they needed to spend money to upgrade to a "big membership" to continue using the AI function.
At the same time, the consumer also said that he was "killed" by WPS big data: the system pushed him to upgrade to a "big membership", which was even more expensive than his colleagues with lower membership levels ("super members").
In response to the problem of "matryoshka-style" charging, WPS hotline customer service once responded that users had previously reported that there were too many members of various types, so the company upgraded and integrated the membership system in April 2023 and launched "Super Member" and "Super Member Pro".
As for the disputes related to the difference in upgrade fees for different members, the above-mentioned hotline customer service said: "The amount of the price difference for upgrade is indeed calculated by the page system. The system will calculate the price difference that needs to be compensated based on the membership status of each user account and the remaining membership time, combined with the user's situation. The longer the remaining membership time, the greater the corresponding price difference."
After decades of "fighting" with Microsoft, the other party once "stolen" them.
Tianyancha information shows that Beijing Kingsoft Office Software Co., Ltd. ("Kingsoft Office" for short), a subsidiary of WPS, was registered and established in 2011.
As a world-renowned provider of office software products and services, Kingsoft Office has now formed a complete product ecosystem covering individuals, enterprises and governments. Its core products include WPS Office, WPS 365, a new office productivity platform for organizations and enterprises, and WPS AI, an intelligent office assistant.
It is worth mentioning that although WPS developed by Kingsoft Office is often regarded by the outside world as a "domestic alternative" to Office, the former 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, Qiu Bojun, the founder of WPS, decided to write a word processing system that could replace WordStar.
In order to achieve this goal, Qiu Bojun joined Hong Kong Jinshan Company, which could provide him with development conditions. After that, Qiu Bojun locked himself in a hotel and concentrated on software development. During this period, he suffered from hepatitis many times.
Hard work pays off. In 1988, Qiu Bojun used a 386 computer to type out 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, WPS became synonymous with computers between 1988 and 1996, and its market share in domestic office software once reached more than 90%.
In 1996, Microsoft, which had first arrived in China, took the initiative to find Kingsoft, and the two parties signed an agreement to share file formats with each other. With the help of this agreement, Microsoft has seized the Chinese market with almost no effort.
Since then, the two sides have competed many times, but WPS failed to reverse the situation. Faced with the fact that "Microsoft Office has become the industry standard", Kingsoft finally decided to "abandon its martial arts" and overthrow and rewrite all WPS codes.
In 2005, WPS Office 2005 version was officially released. According to the official website of Kingsoft Office, this version is highly compatible with competing products in terms of file format, user interface and secondary development interface from the underlying architecture.
At the same time, WPS also announced that the personal version of its products is completely free, marking the official start of its transformation into Internet products.
In 2011, with the advent of the mobile Internet era, WPS released mobile versions of its products globally, successfully achieving "overtaking in corners." In 2013, the release of WPS Office iOS version further expanded its application scenarios on the mobile terminal.
In 2019, Kingsoft Office was successfully listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. Lei Jun said with emotion at the listing ceremony, "The listing of Kingsoft Office on the Science and Technology Innovation Board is a victory of persistence. From the founding of Kingsoft Office in 1988 to today, WPS has gone a full 31 years. From the time when Kingsoft Office was prepared for listing in 1999 as the business main body, we have waited for 20 years until today."
Radar Finance has noticed that after entering the AI era, the competition between Word and WPS continues. In March 2023, Microsoft officially announced the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot, fully integrating AI into the Office family.
In the same year, Kingsoft Office also launched WPS AI anchoring the three strategic directions of AIGC (content creation), Copilot (smart assistant), and Insight (knowledge insight), and took the lead in realizing the application of 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 creates a new interaction paradigm of "multiple rounds of dialogue and controllable modification between humans and AI assistants", and can provide 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 been upgraded from tools to AI assistants."
According to Boyan Consulting citing IDC data, based on the number of end-user authorizations (including cloud subscriptions and local deployments), in the first quarter of 2026, Kingsoft Office ranked first in the industry with a market share of 32.1%, followed by Microsoft and Tencent Docs with market shares of 28.5% and 14.3% respectively.
“Double profit growth” in the first quarter, monthly active equipment growth slowed down
Driven by its three core strategies of "AI, collaboration, and internationalization," Kingsoft Office recently delivered a stellar first quarter 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%; it recorded a net profit attributable to the parent company of 2.195 billion yuan, a significant increase of 444.97% from the same period last year.
However, Kingsoft Office emphasized in its financial report that the company's single-quarter net profit increased significantly year-on-year, mainly due to the significant contribution of large investment income generated by some of the company's external investment fund projects.
Kingsoft Office stated that given that the valuation of the companies invested in the fund is susceptible to multiple factors such as the macro environment, industry cycles, and corporate operations, it does not rule out the possibility of large fluctuations in related investment income in the coming quarters or even losses in a single quarter, which will in turn have an impact on the company's overall net profit level.
In terms of business, 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%.
In this regard, Kingsoft Office said that the steady growth of this business revenue is mainly due to the company's continuous promotion of iterative upgrades of AI products, deepening refined operations in domestic and overseas markets, and the simultaneous improvement of WPSAI monthly activity, user payment conversion rate and customer unit price brought about by the continuous improvement of AI functions.
As of the end of the first quarter, the number of monthly active devices of WPS Office worldwide was 672 million, a year-on-year increase of 3.97%. Among them, the number of monthly active devices of the PC version was 328 million, a year-on-year increase of 9.08%; while affected by the decline in global smartphone shipments, the number of monthly active devices of the mobile version decreased by 0.47% year-on-year to 344 million.
Compared with the same period last year, the growth rates of Kingsoft Office's aforementioned indicators all declined significantly. In the first quarter of 2025, the year-on-year growth rates of WPS Office 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 the stage of Kingsoft Office relying on the expansion of user scale to drive growth has basically ended, and the C-end market is gradually approaching the ceiling.
During the same period, Kingsoft Office WPS 365 business and WPS software business contributed revenue of 244 million yuan and 347 million yuan to the company respectively, a year-on-year increase of 60.79% and 32.24%.
Kingsoft Office stated in its financial report that the rapid growth of WPS 365 business is due to the company's continuous iteration of AI and collaboration product capabilities, the steady improvement in the breadth and depth of coverage of private enterprise and local state-owned enterprise customers, and the continued increase in orders from large-scale customers.
As for the WPS software business, revenue has been able to achieve rapid growth due to the continued release of procurement demands from the Party and Government Xinchuang and the continuous iterative 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 R&D expenses increased by 25.58%, 28.34%, and 21.55% year-on-year respectively to 273 million yuan, 134 million yuan, and 572 million yuan, squeezing the company’s profit margin to a certain extent.
Despite its impressive overall performance in the first quarter, Kingsoft Office's recent performance in the capital market has been unsatisfactory.
According to Flush iFinD data, in January this year, Kingsoft Office’s share price was as high as 415 yuan per share, but as of the close of trading on June 23, the company’s share price had fallen back to 215.43 yuan per share.
Radar Finance will continue to pay attention to the subsequent development of Kingsoft Office and WPS.