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Ray,
I presume you're talking about MS-DOS as the app that
had the end user "by the Gonads" in the 80's (ie 83,
84, 85). And if I'm, reading you're message
correctly, it's esentailly the OS that allowed them to
leverage their other products such as Word and Excel
an steal marketshare from estblished giants like
Visicalc back in the 80's. Remember, we aren't
talking aobut now. We're talking about different case
histories in time, when realtively mid to small
comapnies release products into overcrowded markets.
Thats what MSFT did with WORD and EXCEL, Access, and
even SQL.
So your premise doesn't ring that true with me. When
I think back, I see a different common thread. What I
see is that growing market share had little to do with
merely marketing and cash and bullying and all those
other things and everything to do with product
excellence. Like it not, MSFT builds good software,
realtively speaking. There's no question that to some
degree leverage and presence they already had helped
but that wasn't IMO the main reason. If that was true
then why couldn't a Megalon like IBM grab at least
some marketshare for Lotus? They had just as much
cash and clout. Could it be that Lotus sucks compared
to Excel. I thought it did. Same for other
wordprocessors. MSFT has always had a huge long term
commitmment to their core software such as Excel and
Word. They have continued to innovate to a degree (or
steal ideas from the world around them) and build on
previous gains. When they took it Windows it made a
huge difference. The others couldn't quite keep up.
Once again, they pusheed the state of the art further
and that's something the others weren't doing.
Another example is Eudora. They have a good product
and they have a sizeable number of users even in the
face corporate domination by MSFT. NO $$$ or market
clout, just a great product.
But this story has played out before. Look at
Eletronic Arts. I think they're the biggest PC game
manufacturer in the world now. They started around
1984 with a few simple games and a few coders. They
were however very good at writing games and that was
their advantage. LIke Microsoft, they built products
that did more and extended state of the art. It
wasn't cash, or bullying or anything else that allowed
them to grow marketshare in an already crowded market.
And at the Broderbund, Sierra Online, Serius, (and
who wrote castle wolfenstien?), Sir Tech and several
others were all bigger players writing great games for
the PC.
The same thing happened again, about 5 years later
with a company called Interplay. My friend Kathy was
dating one of the founders of the company at the time
so we would talk about what they were doing. EA had
become a big player, Broderbund was still big, Sierra
Online had the Kings Quest fame as well as others and
there were more games from more companies than ever.
But this little start up succeeded and has become one
of the biggest game companies with such titles as
Bard's Tale and Chess 2000 and so on (as of a couple
years ago when I checked last -- they may have been
bought out by EA or someone). I know for a fact this
company had nothing but a couple great coders, some
talented charismatic leaders and some cash for pizza
every night. And they worked like dogs to deliver
great sofware.
I mean I could go on and on with examples. But the
common thread I see among all those case studies is
that these are people who were
1. Good at what they do and built state of the art
software that people wanted and responded to
2. Attracted enough venture captial to have a
reasonable marketing presence.
3. Committed themselves to building on past success.
The common theme isn't market clout, 18Billion in the
bank or bullying software manfc or whatever. It was
standing out from the crowd with a great product in an
active market that had growing demand -- which was
easy to gauge by all the companies that were actively
writing for that market.
Now the PC game industry does more business in revenue
than Hollywood and the market is even more
overcrowded.
Markets definitely get saturated but I think that
point is reached when the state of the art is raised
to such a point that it requires a huge investment
just to meet it. Adventure gaming is getting to that
point now. You should see the graphics and animation.
But even still if someone talented group of small frys
comes out with an original idea that captures people
imagination, you can bet they will become players in a
market that by any measure is very crowded and has
been for some time.
So I could say we're both touching on the truth here.
The key is a great idea in a market that has
demonstrated demand.
When last I checked, all those charting packages (and
there are scads more out there than just those
mentioned) are all still in business and have been for
some time.
Point is, you have to go with a good innovative idea
where there are already players.
Jen.
Umm... There's another factor to MS's success in
application software,
add-ons and integration tools that you have
overlooked.... They already had
a LARGE market share of the computer industry, and
hence end-user, by the
GONADS (and still do) before developing app #1. It was
just a matter of
time. Hang in there; continue to build market-share in
the OS market;
integrate, and distribute in some cases, the apps with
the OS; bully the
hardware manufactures and retailers into
"recommending" your products --
otherwise, you won't get those favorable OEM deals.
So... the success of
"managing to grow and sell software in overcrowded
markets" has something to
do with the amount of Clout you have in the market,
whether that be cash,
market-share or a great product. If MS would have been
just another software
developer, without the OS stranglehold and
market-share behind them, Bill
Gates might be working for Steve Jobbs today...
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