Hi, Sara,
Though it doesn't answer your question, one place to examine is the list
of Major OpenOffice.org Deployments:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments
Actual market share is hard to guess, in part because OpenOffice.org is
free to download and redistribute. One can get a CD or download it many
times, or just once, and install it on many machines or none at all.
Also, some sites are reluctant to draw attention from MS marketeers and
avoid mentioning that they use it. Also, some larger businesses and
institutions may have one or more site licenses for other suites, but
still run OpenOffice.org in certain departments or in parallel.
In regards to market share, it might be important to start at the
beginning with Visicalc and then Lotus 1-2-3 (even Quattro), and WordStar
(and its predecessors) and WordPerfect. If you can get old, printed
copies of general computing magazines from the 1980's and 1990's, BYTE was
a good example, you can see from the advertisements how the market
narrows. You can also see how a company used bundling (even illegal
tying) and undercutting (even leveraging a monopoly) of prices narrowed
the selection.
dBase and Foxpro, Harvard Graphics (aka Harvard Presentation Graphics) and
Corel's Presentations also met interesting fates.
Use of undocumented, proprietary data formats have also played a very big
role in acquiring and controlling marketshare. As have politics, one
prominent company spends tens of millions in both the EU and the US in
lobbying, those are just the declared sums. [1]
It would be very interesting to read your thesis. Will it be in English
or Italian.
Best regards,
-Lars
[1] e.g.
Matt Loney. "Microsoft's lobbying budget 'outstripped Enron's'" ZDNet
UK. 2002-02-12.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,2103784,00.htm
Ken Silverstein. "The Microsoft Network" Mother Jones. 1998-01-01.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/01/silverstein.html
Tobias Buck. "Microsoft seeks US backing in EU antitrust battle"
Financial Times. 2005-11-14.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/37b7160a-5484-11da-826c-00000e25118c.html
Caron Carlson. "Abramoff Scandal Could Cast Pall On Tech Lobby" eWeek.
2006-01-13. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1911081,00.asp
I'm not sure whether incidents like these below can be called lobbying or
corruption:
Andrew Colley. "Democrats attack Gates' "charity"" ZDNet AU.
2004-06-29.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/0,39023166,39151789,00.htm
Thomas C Greene. "Gates gives $100m to fight HIV, $421m to fight Linux"
The Register. 2002-11-13.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/13/gates_gives_100m_to_fight/
Tom McNichol. "Virtual Philanthropy" Salon. 1997-01-01.
http://www.salon.com/jan97/philanthropy970127.html
Scarlet Pruitt. "E-México favors windows over linux" InfoWorld.
2002-06-12.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/12/020612hnemexico.html
Lars Noodén ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
OpenOffice.org: Now ISO 26300 Standards Compliant !
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006, Sara Tomasini wrote:
Dear Sir, My name is Sara Tomasini and Im studying Net-Economy at the
University of Trento, Faculty of Economy in Italy. I need some
information about the desktop office suite market; in particular about
OpenOffices market share in relation to Microsoft Office's one. These
information are very precious for the first part of my master thesis
that concerns with the situation of desktop suite market. Thank you for
your attention. Kind Regards,
Sara Tomasini.
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
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