How Microsoft Beat WordPerfect/The Evidence

[Jeffrey Fox <jf@pipeline.com>]

  In reponse to my earlier post about how Microsoft unfairly pulled the rug
  from under
  Lotus, WordPerfect, etc., it's been claimed that Microsoft merely outlasted and
  outprogrammed the others. I think not.
  
  Here's the first piece of "hard facts"
  
  I clipped an ad from the 12/11/90 issue of PC Magazine .This is just a few
  months after
  Windows 3.0 came out, a time when supposedly WordPerfect and Lotus were
  "competing"
  with Microsft Word and Excel. Keep in mind that by this time, most new PCs
  came with Win 3 pre-installed
  and that was due to Microsoft using MS-DOS licenses to strongarm the
  computer mfrs...as shown by the Justice Department in 1995.
  
  The full-page ad is for a mail order company called Telemart. There was so
  little Windows software available then
  that they listed in a separate section entitled, "Do a Little Windows
  Shopping with Telemart" Heres' what Microsoft had for sale in this list:
  MS Excel for Windows $299
  MS Powerpoint for Windows $305
  MS Project for Windows $425
  MS Word for Windows $305
  (In my judgment, this demonstrates that when Windows 3.0 arrived and took
  over, Microsoft came with an
  array of high-powered applications that they could market immediately).
  
  Here's what competitors to the above products had for sale in 12/90:
  Ami Professional $289 (Windows)
  Lotus 1-2-3 ver 2.2 and ver 3.1 ($335 and $410, non Windows)
  Quattro Pro $310 (non Windows)
  Supercalc 5 $290 (non Windows)
  WordPerfect (non Windows)
  WordStar (non Windows)
  
  Only Ami Pro, a product from a small company, was competing in the Windows
  word processor market.
  No one serious in the spreadsheet market. Ami Pro was eventually acquired by
  Lotus because Lotus could
  never hope to catch up to MS themselves.
  
  My contention, which I stand behind, is that MS planned to have all their
  industrial strength apps ready when they forcefed Win 3.0 on everyone, full
  knowing that their major competitors had invested millions in developing
  their won apps for IBM's OS/2-presentation manager....an operating system
  Microsoft had only recently been convincing them all to develop for.
  
  Now you can say it was their own fault for developing for the wrong OS, but
  even in those days developers had to follow Microsoft's lead (they DID own
  MS-DOS). And none of them had any way of knowing that MS was secretly
  planning to come out with a full array of Windows apps and blow them to bits.
  
  A brilliant strategy, but patently unfair. And an example of how a company
  can manipulate a market, destroy competitors, while not price-fixing in the
  traditional sense of a monopoly.
  -Jeff