4 ms·
A big part of why Office gained ground was that it was offered cheaper than its competitors. A big part of why they could do that was it was subsidized by DOS a
by ebbv 9y ago
A big part of why Office gained ground was that it was offered cheaper than its competitors. A big part of why they could do that was it was subsidized by DOS and Windows licenses. Then there are enterprise customers who got bundling discounts for getting Office software as well as operating system software from Microsoft.
I'm not saying that the Office products were bad, nobody was going to buy software that totally didn't work, and I'm not trying to argue the relative merits of Wordstar or WordPerfect or Lotus 123 or whatever, but if you don't think the "home field advantage" of DOS and Windows is a big part of the success of Office, then I think you're in denial.
- jasode 9y ago>A big part of why Office gained ground was that it was offered cheaper than its competitors. I remember that MS kicked off an office suite price war and that Borland and Lotus matched the low prices with their suites. MS Office still outsold Borland and Lotus when prices were the same. Borland Quattro & Approach and Lotus Ami Pro word processors were not enough of a differentiator. MS Word and Excel were also the biggest sellers on Apple Mac and obviously, there was no Windows os there.