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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."
There was a Corel Linux?
Summation 2
Corel Linux just really seemed like a "me too" product and it never seemed clear why it existed.
I think they were doing it for the same reason everybody else was. If you got decent enough traction started with your distro, you were in a better position to start charging decent rates for support and such. Suse and Redhat had better luck, and there might not be as much room for competition at that level as we might think (at least, not at certain profit ranges). As for the word processor, I think they were hoping to bring a relatively mature software suite to market to compete with the OSS projects that were there. Considering that MS was (and is) likely to never bring Office to linux, it seemed like a good idea. I'm curious how this will pan out in the future. Open Office is improving and is still free. It might not be worth the effort if they're not swift enough or make the feature set a slam dunk over OO.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Does none remember that Corel was bought by Microsoft? Does Microsoft not have a controlling-interest in Corel process and operations? So they dropped their Linux offers and claim to have regained value, yet have not the common courtesy to refer to Linux as a service-oriented technology? Sure Linux is a liability if the company doesn't use it for a profitable purpose. Business-101 isn't what Corel needs, because it is evident propoganda Microsoft directs through its subsidiaries it buys into. This is no different than how Microsoft inducted SCO to harass and issue false titles and false claim to Intellectual Property owners in competition.
without prejudice
We have a Corel icon?
Great Intellect...
With Free applications getting better and better the chance to sell word processors and graphics applications on the Linux platform is vanishing. Corel Draw and Word Perfect could have made a big difference years ago, but now they are irrelevant. Corel (and also Adobe) failed to acquire a profitable market. Now it's the time for audio applications, but I suppose ISVs will wakeup in a few years just to find out there is already some open source Cubase-killer.
Check out my cross-platform apps
From the Wikipedia Article: He survived an investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission
:(
Uh, that depends how Wikipedia defines "survived". If it's defined as being reprimanded and fined (with his holding company, for only half a million dollars) for insider trading, then yes, I guess he did "survive" it. This slimebag's questionable trading right before the stock tanked caused Corel (and it's nice WordPerfect Suite) to be hampered for years. To quote the OSC:
Mr Cowpland is before the panel because of an egregious error in making a trade without disclosing knowledge of a material fact. [...] This panel however, is of the view that, had this conduct taken place after the amendments to the Ontario Securities Act in April 2003, [...] the sanctions ordered by this panel may have been much more severe.
[...]
[64] The respondents will pay $500,000 to the Investor Education Fund.
[65] Pursuant to section 127(1) (8) of the Act, Michael Cowpland is hereby prohibited from becoming or acting as a Director of a reporting issuer for two (2) years from the date hereof.
[66] M.C.J.C. Holdings Inc. [Cowpland's holding company which he sold his shares from] and Michael Cowpland are hereby reprimanded.
[67] Pursuant to Section 127(1)(2)(a) and (b) of the Act, M.C.J.C. Holdings Inc. is ordered to pay $75,000 to the Commission in respect of a portion of the Commission's costs with respect to this matter.
Time to insert another {{dubious}} into Wikipedia
Corel's problem was that it lost pretty much all focus somewhere around the mid 1990's. Their strength was with CorelDraw, but by the mid 1990's they were trying to sell a mini Linux computer called the NetWinder (I remember playing with one of the developer units -- they were actually pretty slick little machines, which IMO weren't matched until Apple released the Mac mini), bought out WordPerfect, tried their hand at a pure Java Office Suite, and tried their hand at their own Linux distro. In effect, they had no sense of cohesion -- they seemed to be trying their hand at any crazy project that came around.
Linux wasn't the problem. Linux just happened to be one of the many things they played with during this time. At the same time, they let their original core business stagnate, allowing other competitors in the graphic software business to catch up and surpass them while they wasted resources on all of these other projects.
Part of the "problem" to my mind was Corel's original intent: to be Michael Cowpland own personal research labs ("Corel" == "Cowpland Research Lab"). From a technology standpoint I have to applaud them for the things they tried to do -- the Java Office suite wasn't as bad as many people made it out to be (the beta generally ran well on my OS/2 box at the time), and could have been a vehicle which could have (and I suspect did) push improvements in Java's areas of deficiency at the time. The NetWinder was a really slick and ultra-portable Linux computer that ran on an ARM processor (we had one of the development units at an ISP I worked at in the mid 90's that we were thinking of selling as co-located servers; sound familiar?). Their Linux distro was decent and capable. But in the end they spread themselves too far, and couldn't really find (or build) markets for these products. Their core business got chewed up by the likes of Adobe, Microsoft already had a lock on the Office and OS segments, and in the end only hobbiests were interested in an ARM-based Linux computer that had limited natively compiled software available for it (you often had to build the software you wanted to run that wasn't included with the system yourself, at least in the early days -- great for hobbiests and techies, but not exactly a recipe for mass-market appeal. However, I am still of the opinion that the NetWinders failure was really that the concept was ahead of its time). And a Java-based Office suite didn't interest much of anyone from a commercial perspective (although many of the parties involved in the push towards thin clients were very interested in the outcome of code of this sort, and I personally think that it's only a matter of time, although in the end AJAX may be a better solution than Java (ref: Google Spreadsheets)).
Linux just happened to be one of Corel's targets. I don't think Linux itself had anything to do with Corel's problems -- it just happened to be one of the things that distracted them from their core business, and never did in any way that earned them any real market distinctions. Corel's problem was a lack of focus and spreading themselves way too thin while virtually ignoring what made their mark on the industry in the first place, allowing their competition to surpass them.
Yaz.