Study: > 21% of German PCs run OpenOffice

[erika]

SoftMaker market share is only %0.3 even in Germany. Why is it so low?

"According to Webmasterpro.de, a German IT service provider, the open source OpenOffice suite and its derivatives, such as StarOffice or IBM's Lotus Symphony, are installed on more than 21% of German PCs. A sample of over one million German-speaking Internet users showed that 72% of users preferred Microsoft Office, while 2.7% preferred Corel's WordPerfect, 1.4% used Apple's iWork, 0.3% selected SoftMaker Office and 0.03% chose KOffice. Among the surveyed German speaking Internet users, 17.1% did not appear to have an Office suite installed."

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/ ... 19501.html

[erika]

I think you need to be more aggressive in pricing and marketing to grab more market share.

[sven-l]

Thank you for the hints suggestions. I'll refer them to our marketing team.

[erika]

Netbook sales have reached to 30.2 million in FY09. Why don't you make a netbook bundle deal with a NetBook vendor such as $10 for Softmaker Office OEM version (no DVD, no boxes, no books, already installed with the box and licensed to that netbook only and only). I think you better need to market for the mass with a low price but with a high volume of sales. So you will make more more money.

Asus, Acer, and Fujitsu Siemens are good candidates for you to deal with and cooperate. Knock their doors and cooperate. Don't sleep.

Netbook shipments surge to 30.2 million in 2009

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/02/05 ... nts_surge/

[erika]

Why don't you make alliance with Google? They will ship Chrome OS based netbook soon. Instead of Open Office, they might consider putting SoftMaker Office within that OS. There must a local office application in that box.


Chrome Netbook Specs Stretch Believability

http://www.pcworld.com/article/185512/c ... ility.html

[ari-free]

It's hard to compete with Microsoft directly. I remember when everyone used to use Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3. OpenOffice had to be absolutely free in order to get anywhere and it is still a real minority. People make so much money from using Office that price doesn't really matter. You have to show you can offer something they can't get from Microsoft besides a lower price.

Maybe the way to get there is the mobile route: buy softmaker for android and offer the Windows or Linux version as well (or discounted).