[Ti] MS dropping Office for Mac

[Phillip McGree]

>On 1/20/03 6:17 PM, "Michael Bigley" <wakinyan at fuse.net> wrote:
>
> > Microsoft (remember MS once announced they were dropping Office for
>> Mac),
>
>While MS has privately threatened to do that, they have never made any such
>"announcement".


They would be mad to. 

1) Office for the Mac makes a bunch of money for MS, despite it not selling as well as MS would like (ie pricing).  Mac software just doesn't have the high tech support costs that Windows equivalents do.

2) Can you spell "monopoly".  Thanks to political situations and world events, the focus on MS's monopolistic practices vanished last year, resulting in MS pretty much walking away free and clear.  They were real lucky to get off this time, but would most likely not be so fortunate next time.  In 2000 and most of 2001, MS was facing some harsh punishments but that all vanished the minute the first plane hit the first tower.  The word "terrorist" might be the big one right now, but "monopoly" might make a comeback yet.

3) Mac sales would decrease a bit, but most Mac users would stick with the platform.  This would open the market up to competitors (ie AppleWorks Pro*, ThinkOffice).  Gee, if someone can develop a suitable substitute for the Mac platform, it's only a matter of time before it gets ported to Windows (at a much lower retail price than the current MS Office).

Anything's possible, but in the big picture (which is how MS plays things, ie Explorer, Outlook, other loss making things), MS will do anything possible to get control of a market, and then maintain that control.  MS will of course make threats occasionally, thus demonstrating their power and control.



Phil


*AppleWorks Pro... stop getting excited, I made that one up as a hypothetical example.


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