Dropping Linux Helped Restore Corel Profitability

basotl writes "Newsforge is reporting that Corel attributes part of its financial comeback to dropping Corel Linux and its Linux office suite. Though they are not currently offering products for Linux, they are interested in prospect in the future." From the article: "Looking back, Brown describes the decision to drop Corel Linux as 'a successful strategy for Corel and an early step toward the refocusing of our business. At the time we knew that Corel's core focus was moving away from the operating system to concentrate more on our application offerings, and this would almost certainly have an impact on the level of service we could afford to customers and users of Corel Linux.' Nor, as a company struggling to regain profitability, was Corel inclined to try to develop the GNU/Linux market by continuing to support WordPerfect for Linux."

Comments

Re:Come again?

[peeping_Thomist]

Don't you remember the Corel Linux informercials? A half-hour informercial extolling the virtues of Corel Linux and explaining how Corel was setting up the perfect alternative to Windows.

I'm not making this up. If I recall correctly it ran many times on ZDTV back in the day. That and the Cue Cat one were my two favorite dotcom bubble infomercials.

Re:Not really surprising

[mcrbids]

Corel was, for years, led by Michael Cowpland. An interesting fellow, he seems to always be looking for the "next big thing".

So here he was, director of a vendor of commodity products, (mostly, Word Perfect and Corel Draw!) looking for the next big market surge. Corel didn't have what it took to catch any "next big wave".

But, they kept trying anyway. Remember when Corel was going to port a Java-Office suite?

But, in any of these efforts, it doesn't seem that Michael was willing to "put out" what it took to finish it all the way through. The Java-Office turned out to be buggy, and terribly slow. The Corel Linux was pretty, but buggy. I tried it, and liked it at first, but usability problems plagued Corel Linux, so I only ended up using it for a week or so before switching back to RedHat. (and never looking back)

Of course, it worked out well for Michael - he lives in lavish luxury - but Corel sank like a stone in kerosene.

What would really help Corel...

[Vo0k]

...if they released Corel Draw for Linux.
Inkscape doesn't live up to the needs of the market. There is simply NO good vector drawing program for Linux. Meantime there's a great office package and lots of distributions. Corel can't hope to make much profit with such a competition, but pushing Corel Draw they would pretty much leave the others behind.