Microsoft Office 2003 Sales Disappoint
Our chief competitor is falling behind its projected sales for Office 2003, according to the Channel Register. The article does not even mention OpenOffice, just the difficulty of getting people to switch from older versions of MS Office to newer. However, with some estimates placing OpenOffice at 10% – 15% global marketshare, that means it might be as widespread as MS Office 2003 — wow!
“Office 2003 appears to be falling behind in targeted sales for this point in the product’s lifecycle, according to Microsoft’s own internal figures and guidelines. Just 15% of PCs are running Office 2003, two years into its life, with Office 12 – the next edition of Microsoft’s ubiquitous suite – now on the horizon. However, Microsoft traditionally expects between 50% and two thirds of customers to be running the previous version of Office when the new copy ships.
During a recent press roundtable Chris Capossela, vice president for Microsoft’s Information Worker product management group said that Microsoft is holding firm on these numbers, and expects two thirds of the 400m Office installation base will be running Office 2003 at the time when Office 12 ships.
That means an awful lot of sales, marketing and product development work by partners during the next 18 months, in order for Microsoft to hit those figures.”