Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!jacobson From: jacobson@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: More on WordPerfects Reasons Message-ID: <45600063@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 4 May 89 03:36:00 GMT Lines: 92 Nf-ID: #N:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:45600063:000:5770 Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!jacobson May 3 22:36:00 1989 Here is some interesting further info from Wordperfect on what happened from their view. Captured from another net: Sb: #WPCorp & Amiga products Fm: Amiga WordPerfect 72447,3427 To: ALL Just to make sure that everyone understands...WordPerfect Corporation is currently doing no NEW development for the Amiga. There are two programmers assigned to continue with maintenance. This means that the promised 4.1 maintenance update WILL be done (although it might take longer). All shipping products will be supported and updated as necessary for maintenance. I will also, from time to time, drop in and answer questions (as my new position permits). The reasons for this decision are several, below I will give a general description of some of the more important ones: - Small market: CBM has made a lot of noise about it's reaching the 1M mark in machines sold, but our realistic market is MUCH smaller. We estimate that there are roughly 300,000 machines in the U.S. We have sold approximately 26,000 units in the US. This gives a market share of approximately 9%. We estimate that this figure is approaching the saturation of our potential market. We feel that although there are lots of Amigas out there, there are is only a small segment of those that want/require the functionality of WordPerfect. To help bolster those dismal number, we turned to the rest of the world (Germany initially) CBM claims that Germany is a bigger market than the US. We have sold roughly 2,500 copies of WP in Germany (not even enough to cover the translation costs. We have also talked with several other software developers, all of them indicating that they've had a dismal experience outside the US. All told, we've sold slightly more than 30,000 units world-wide (a large amount of them at dramatically discounted prices (the 500 bundle, etc.). Since our products are targeted heavily to the business market, we do not think that our market share can dramically increase until the Amiga has a much stronger hold in the business world. The market the CBM claims may be there, but unless you're writing games, you're not going to even come close to getting much of it. While it is true that there are only 2-2.5 million MACs in the world, there is a HUGE difference in their market, in that there is a large share of them in the market that WordPerfect targets its products. - Insufficient sales: Many people would be very happy with sales of 30K units. WordPerfect Corporation cannot be. There are huge costs in products such as WordPerfect. Just to get it out the door cost nearly $750,000. Costs of the manual, maintenance, toll-free support, and product enhancement have tallied up to the point where monthly product sales cannot cover monthly costs. Our costs were roughly $70-90K/month. During the past year we've only had two months where sales were able to cover the costs. - Time: Around this time last year, the Amiga WP development team was cut to two people (for the same reasons as this time), CBM was made aware of this. From that time the group slowly grew as we tried to broaden our product line (to make up for the insufficient WP sales). Library was attempt at this. We had lots of positive reaction to Library when we showed it, but in the end, it just didn't sale. In the end it lost nearly $350,000. - 5.0/6.0 cost prohibitive: In order to satisfy our users wants/needs (and increase our market share to a break even level) we feel it important to have graphics capabilities and high quality printing (a la 5.0). We've done some work in that direction and done a lot of evaluating. We estimate that the project would require 8-10 man years. So, with 5 programmers (which we didn't have) we could have done it in 2 years. With the current market, or even an optimistic view of the market in 2 years we do not feel that the investment will ever be recouperated. - Experiment: When WPCorp started working on the Amiga we didn't know what was going to happen. We felt that there was a chance (since the Amiga is still, IMHO, the best micro-computer on the market for the $) that things would go well. Things didn't go as we had hoped. It's sad. I'd rather be working on it right now. We're not necessarily pointing fingers, but we do feel frustrated and the comments of Stan Kalisher (Impulse) in AmigaArts/WP/DP Publishing #15941 do reflect some of those frustrations rather well. - Money: OK, call us greedy, call us what you want. But, frankly, over the existence of the Amiga group we've lost nearly $800,000. No one can justify such an existence. We kept (being loyal Amiga programmers) the axe away as long as we could. We were optimistic for as long as we could. But when you're losing that much money you just can't go on forever. A company that goes on ignoring a wound like that will eventually loose all it's blood and die. None of us programming on the Amiga liked it, but we felt it a necessary step. We can look at this as the best alternative under the circumstances. Since WPCorp is doing the things it needs to in order to keep alive, it will still be around when the Amiga finally takes it's place in the business community (assuming CBM gets it's act together). We'll be able to re-enter the Amiga market with all the technology we're developing on other graphics oriented machines. // Lynn LeBaron \X/ Manager, Amiga Development WordPerfect Corporation End of Msg 64 Enter Msg to Read (1 - 68) > Command >