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UK's Biggest Supermarket Challenges Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's equivalent of Walmart is taking on Microsoft in the software game. Tesco is famous for it's cheap 'value' food, but it's now offering 'value' alternatives to Microsoft's biggest products. From the article: 'Now, when you traverse the aisles in search of baked beans, sanitary towels and two-for-one packs of raw mince (hamburger), you can grab yourself a copy of Tesco Office (£20) — an alternative to the almost de-facto standard that is Microsoft Office — or Tesco Antivirus (£10), which is designed to keep your PC free of malware.' Tesco apparently 'takes one in every eight pounds spent in the UK'."
'takes one in every eight pounds spent in the UK'.
I hear this figure quoted regularly, but noone ever backs it up with a source; however they must be doing somthing right, they've made £1.1bn in profts in the last six months
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
From the article: The software is manufactured by a combination of Panda Software, Filestream, Ability and Software Dialog. I've used the panda software, but haven't heard of the others.
And Tesco took £1.1bn in PROFIT.
That has them at around $4bn US (and then some, because the latter half with Christmas is usually far more profitable than the first half) profit per year compared to $2.5bn approx for Microsoft. They aren't going to have to bow to pressure.
Walmart (who do compete in the UK after buying ASDA) were past $10bn in 2005 by comparison.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
According to: http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=62 27 the company coopertating with Tesco is FormJet. They'll distribute via http://www.tescosoftware.com/. FormJet has a Website online (a bit difficult to find from their homepage) where the products are listed: http://www.formjetplc.com/500-products.htm. They list an office suite there called "Ability Office".
l n=en and has a wikipedia article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ability_Office.
The "Ability Office" website is at: http://www.ability.com/sales/products/office.php?
This is not just one of the usual OpenOffice forks.
The office software is called Ability and will just be branded as Tesco. More information about Ability here. The website lists their entire office suite at a cost of $70 (US). The individual packages (Word processing, spreadsheet, database, paint, presentation, photo album) are available for $27.90 each. 20 Pounds = $37 so that's considerable savings. The interface is appears to be a straight clone of Microsoft's office suite. It is able to open and save to Microsoft Office formats, no idea on how well, tho.
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Tesco are a PC supplier. When you walk into a large Tesco, the first thing you see is a large row of shelves stacked high with boxed PCs. I haven't checked to see if there are Tesco Value PCs, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. With the volumes they ship, I would imagine they can ask their wholesaler to bundle pretty much whatever they want.
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"The software is developed by Crawley-based Formjet PLC, which includes the anti-virus developer Panda Software and Ability Software, maker of the Ability office suite."
4 800
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
As the article says, they're selling Ability Office - see http://www.ability.com/
Ability charge 30 quid for it (the basic version); Tesco selling it en masse for 20 seems credible. That's certainly a lot less than MS Office, but it's not the 20 vs 300 numbers that some people quote - you can get MS Office Basic (word and excel only) for around 145
It's probably not competition for Office in the workplace (where any file incompatibility sends folks into something of a tailspin), but it's solid competition for the abomination that is Works - particularly if Tesco preload it on the large number of (really pretty good quality) Acer PCs and laptops they also sell.
I think this is because the range hasn't actually launched yet. See pre-launch web site here.
Anyway, speaking as someone from the UK who shops at tesco regularly... yep, their website sucks.
Formjet PLC for the software, Formjet owns:
* Panda Software (UK) distributes Panda Software antivirus and security products in the UK.
* Ability Software International distributes a powerful suite of office products.
* FileStream (UK) is involved in applications ranging from the backup of computer resources to highly sophistcated graphics solutions.
* Software Dialog UK is a specialist security reseller to the corporate marketplace.
* South Coast Distribution is an established supplier to the OEM market.
* Ideal Innovations.co.uk is an online marketplace. It services the electronic trading requirements of the Formjet Group and third party vendors.
So I think we can see where this is going, Panda Anti-Virus, and Ability Office 4 branded for Tesco... c'est la vie say the old folks, it just goes to show you never can tell.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I think "equivalent" in this case means "massive leader in the supermarket industry" in the UK... which they are.
Yes, mince is called hamburger in the US. Kind of like ground pork in the UK is usually called sausage meat even though it can be used for more than just sausages. So the summary was translating for the USians as mince doesn't really mean much as a noun here.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Ability Software (makers of the office suite) has a web site with a comparison to MS Office and screen shots here:
. php?ln=us
http://www.ability.com/sales/products/abvsms_tech
Windows yes, Office not usually. But that's the same in the US - you get Works if you're "lucky" but I've never seen Office as anything but an extra-cost option for consumer PCs.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Yep, Tesco are a Public Limited Company(PLC) meaning their shares are traded on the open stockmarket.
As for their behaviour, they seem no better/worse than anyone else. More expensive than Asda (Walmart) and cheaper than their main competitor (Sainsburys) they sell groceries and, in their bigger stores, clothing and domestic goods. As you'd imagine, made in China is the order of the day and as with most supermarkets, wages are kept as low as possible to keep prices down. Aside from that, I can't say that much negative PR leaks out although I seem to remember they cut Sunday pay rates for staff on the grounds that Sunday is no different to any other day.
Their value range is the usual no-frills stuff, plain packaging, basic stuff.
As for software I can't wait for Tescux, not so much through some zealous desire to plug Linux but just to see the irritating characters from their TV ads go through the indignity of having to dress as Penguins.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=MSFT
They've made 12,599.00 MUSD in profit in FY06.
Yeah, the software they're distributing not only claims office compatability, it claims to look like office too:
http://www.ability.com/v4/newv4.php?ln=us
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Fight back. Buy from companies that resist Walmart.
p er.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snap
"Tesco Value" is their cheapo in-house brand (they also do plain Tesco brand stuff).
They do very nice cheese but I prefer Sainsburys' sausages.
The name Tesco comes from the founder's wife - Tessa Cohen.
In france, we have such a site, its called Framasoft it contains not only a nice classification of softwares by domain (for Windows, Linux, MacOS), but also some articles, manuals.
L.Pointal
Have you ever considered that Open Office doesn't suit their purposes? Last time I used it (about a year ago), it was very bloated and convoluted.
Maybe their Tesco Office is leaner and simpler, so support is easier and people will be more satisfied with it.