When Microsoft releases Office XP in a few months, the company will face off against its two toughest competitors: software pirates and, well, Microsoft.
On one front, Microsoft must convince as many as 120 million Office 95 and 97 users to upgrade to the new version, an opportunity customers passed on with Office 2000. On the other front, the Redmond, Wash.-based company must combat lost sales to casual and professional pirates. In North America alone, potentially one out of every four copies of Office is pirated, meaning it was copied illegally.
"Microsoft's biggest competitor may in fact be software pirates, just as their biggest competitor is their installed base," said Prudential Securities analyst James Lucier. He said that with so many different versions of Office or Windows available, "there's just no adequate incentive for people to move up."
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