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Adobe Dented as Microsoft Mentions Competition | |
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| Time: 02:02 EST/07:02 GMT | News Source: The Street.com | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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Shares of Adobe Systems sank Wednesday after Microsoft unveiled a potential rival to Adobe's Acrobat product line. The jury is still out, however, on the magnitude and timing of the competitive threat. On Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced plans to deliver the newest addition to the Office family, called XDocs. But taking advantage of Extensible Markup Language, or XML, XDocs will enable office workers to create forms tapping different types of data from multiple sources and also send data from forms to different parts of a business. | ||
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| #1 By 3339 (67.116.255.26) at 10/10/2002 8:30:08 PM |
| Mr. Dee, you hit the issue right on the head, and I think that if Microsoft does bundle XDocs with Office without much of a price difference and without providing options, thy will be facing their next Antitrust case: this time revolving around their Office monopoly. |
| #2 By 6253 (12.237.219.240) at 10/10/2002 11:28:11 PM |
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Mr. Dee, you're forgetting that Microsoft has provided a free Word Viewer for many years, which largely covers the major functionality of Adobe Acrobat Reader (at least as far as the average user would be able to see), and you've always been able to get full Word for less than the full Acrobat product. Heck, a large chunk of PDF files in existence today were produced from Microsoft Word output. Most users don't define "portable document format" in terms of platform independence, high resolution output, eBook digital rights management, and other obscure features of Acrobat. Yet Adobe isn't relegated to those niches because they marketed well, competed hard, listened to customers, and continually improved their product, just like Microsoft always tries to do. Luckily, there was plenty of room in the market for Adobe after Adobe squashed the smaller competitors Common Ground and Replica. Remember them? I bought both of them. Yet this year, I upgraded to Acrobat 5 despite not having much clue as to what has changed since Acrobat 3 (or even Acrobat 1 or 2, for that matter).
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| #3 By 6253 (12.237.219.240) at 10/10/2002 11:28:24 PM |
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sodajerk, I doubt Microsoft would stop providing options. Unlike Windows 9X which never had more than one flavor at a time (unless you count OEM vs. retail, which still only makes two), the Office suite has offered and still offers lots of packaging choices. There's no reason to think Office 11 will suddenly stop.
Today, just in retail channel alone, we've got: Microsoft Works which includes Word 2002 for about $75 street, less than the cost of Word 2002 alone Office XP Academic (Word, XL, PPT, OL) for about $125 street, with blatantly lax enforcement of retail "academic" requirements Office XP Standard (same apps as above) for about $325 street Office XP Standard Upgrade for about $195 street Office XP Professional (Standard plus Access & MSDE) for about $350 street Office XP Professional Upgrade for about $275 street Office XP Developer (Professional plus FP/STS, Dev Tools) for about $550 street Each of the above (except for upgrades and retail academic) come in 7 variations of Volume License SKUs: Open Business, Open Volume Levels A/B/C, Open Academic, Open Charity, Government. Each of these offers media and license a la carte. Volume License also offers a product literally named "Office XP Professional Plus FrontPage." You can get each of Word, XL, PPT, OL, Access, FP/STS separately, in both retail and volume. You can only buy Project, Data Analyzer, and MapPoint separately, but they're available in lots of retail and volume SKUs, and they integrate completely into Office. In volume, you can get OL bundled with Exchange Server CALs. You can get OL in retail bundles with Pocket PC. So what exactly is "Office" then? With Windows 9X, I could open up the LAYOUT.INF file and rattle off all the basic components. That list would be true for every single copy of that version of Windows 9X. Want just Notepad? Don't want screen savers? Want to use only ProgMan and FileMan instead of Explorer? Didn't matter. You bought the one SKU in every case. Windows 95 was Windows 95. Windows 98 was Windows 98. Windows ME was Windows ME. The OEM differences generally came down to plausible technical support issues: USBSUPP needed USB-compliant hardware. To be safe, FAT32 preferred big new drives and systems which didn't have legacy apps already installed atop FAT16. But if you want Office without Access, you've always been able to get that. Want Word by itself? Sure thing. Want the "big four" apps? Got that. Want everything? Yep. Want to use FP Server Extensions without being forced into IIS? Go ahead and install FPSE 2002 on Linux or Solaris; it's 100% supported. Don't really need all of MapPoint and don't need it integrate completely with other Office apps? Here, take Streets & Trips for $29. No, you can't swap Office XP Standard for a bundle of Word, Project, OL, and FP. But you also can't get a Honda Accord LE with the Electrochromatic Interior Rearview Mirror and Compass unless you also take the Leather Package and Reading Light. Regardless of where you might stand on the Windows "monopoly," if Microsoft asked for summary judgment on whether they provide choices for Office, I think it would have to be granted even by Judge Stanley Sporkin or Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. |
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