-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 10 October 2002 12:28 am, John Richard Smith did speak unto the huddled masses, saying:
> There's an article in todays edition of the FT > inwhich Windblows says :- > > "licence change was a mistake" > > and, > > "Microsoft might allow families with more than one PC to use a > single licence" > > > It seems likesales of XP have not been all that good then. > > It would appear that for the first time there has appeared > a crack in the edifice. not the first crack and perhaps not the biggest. the licence change was a crack itself. look at it from their view: you needed to change to a method of demanding a steady flow of cash rather than count on hype and new PC sales. having merged the pro (NT) and home (9x) versions you suddenly lost a part of the upgrade cycle. have to raise the price too. between the two factors more than half your customers suddenly say they are looking elsewhere. even worse, hardware prices are so low, by the time you buy the OS and the office setup, you have spent more in software than hardware. seems pricey to surf the web and write a document now and then. remember more than 50% of users almost never do more. plus you have been in court for years, and despite millions and a few tactics that make you look bad to the people who are in the know, you basically come out with a draw. tough break. after years of being told your security sucks, nimda basically kicks your butt. so you announce a new security policy. the result? you look bad. many a tech feels like the CTO of my wifes company, a fortune 500 company told me he feels: "we always knew their security was bad, but 6000 patches later we get hit by bugbear. so what did those patches do?" after the first few customers fled, the snowball started. nearly everyday a new company or government says they are going open source. and every announcement makes a few more companies brave enough to try. soon you have to give price cuts and incentives to companies like that aussie telco. tens of thousands of desktops switching would be a hell of a blow. the damn "hobby software" is now backed by companies like HP and dell and IBM. plus it seems to be winning the server war. OSS powers the web, and the latest reports say you have been padding your server numbers with empty domains containing no web site. you only hold about 20% of the web server market it turns out. damn. plus you have made an enemy of almost everyone in the industry. none of them can compete with you alone, but they all smell blood in the water now, and they all want a piece. still, you have 3 things on your side: money, massive user base, and preinstalls. except the preinstalls are slipping, and your future user base looks bad. systems are being sold at places like walmart with that damn toy OS, and companies like HP and Sun are getting into the act with low cost machines for companies. they even have an office suite to replace yours, and that is the real cash cow. then a survey by some universities says only 1.8% of pc users run linux on the desktop! at last a victory! but it also says that nearly 20% of college students use it, and even higher in tech schools. these are your future customers, running the other OS. 20% maybe more. and a free test drive is hard to fight. time to take action, you change the retoric. no more calling it cancer, no more ignoring it. "we will compete on features, not price." but you know that cheaper software that does the job "good enough" is often the winner over featres. that is how your office suite took share from players like Corel and IBM after all. and this software is more than good enough. in many cases it is better. the big gun, FUD, doesn't work either. when people can try it themselves and see, and they already know you to be a long time liar, the FUD falls on deaf ears. the last asset, money, is startiong to get tied up between courts, payed off poloticians, dropping economy, and great ventures like the xbox. (hey what is a few hundred dollars of lose per unit? you will get your market share, right?) so what now? now you have to compete on price too. throw 'em a few freebies, stall for time. something will turn up, right? - -- "I don't know who said that, but I usually credit Shakespeare. That guy said damn near everything." -me shane Profile at: http://dmoz.org/profiles/shen.html Proud to be a DMOZ editor since 10-98 Mandrake Users Club Member http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/club/ Registered linux user #101606 @ http://counter.li.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE9pahFBwq+ZwvIN/oRAvEiAJsH91WnP11bC/o2I+GnKQitRLA+4gCePejC Ae88VYHgLl/gBa5BZf8EjJI= =bJ9L -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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