AS Microsoft prepares the release of Office 2003, it faces its strongest competition in the suite market for some time. Canny marketing and the dominant position of Word and Excel helped Microsoft all but eliminate its main rivals, Lotus and WordPerfect, by the mid-1990s, and enabled it to reap the rewards of market dominance.Office has long been Microsoft's cash cow, responsible for about 60 per cent of its profit. It is a key element in the ecosystem of developers, trainers and users that surrounds the software giant.
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