Benjamin Horst wrote:
As for marketshare, some recent surveys have estimated OpenOffice at
10% - 15%. Are we running neck-and-neck with MS Office 2003? It would
be a fine thing!
Here is the link:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Open-source-versus-Microsoft-in-office-
arena-2554.shtml
And to from my own site: http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/59 as
well as today's update: http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/86
Ben
The critical statistic I think is that we probably still lag MSO '97 in
terms of market share. The MSO XP/2003 market is a moot point because
the customer has already made the investment either in cash or the
effort involved to pirate it. While this customer base can be targeted
for upgrade with the release of MSO 12 right now our best target market
is '97 users. If we could move that market share to upgrade to 2.0 we
would be well on our way to achieving the SMP goals.
It is obvious that the cost of upgrade is a significant barrier to those
users for MS marketing.
Since cost is not a barrier for the upgrade to OOo then the barrier is
more about resistance to change. I don't think that there is
significant advantage to '97 users to upgrade to the 1.1.x series,
however that could not be said to be true for 2.0 where the benefits of
upgrade are significant.
We need to create a campaign that focuses on the benefits of upgrade
from '97 to 2.0.
The "Free Office Suite" campaign is a broad marketing thrust and is
aimed at brand recognition as much as anything rather than targeting.
Therefore it seems we have a number of target markets.
New Users of Office technology, which the INGOTs programme is the best
tool to my way of thinking because it targets pre lock-in Users and
lowers the entry level considerably.
Users of old technology who have not been able to justify the cost of
upgrade or migration. This to me is an area we don't address at all
well right now in terms of marketing.
One of the barriers that I see here is the lack of interoperabilty with
common accountancy packages such as Quickbooks and MYOB. It is
something that needs addressing in the near future. Perhaps part of our
marketing needs to be addressed at the producers of these applications.
Cheers
Yo
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