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'."

Comments

I think its a good idea

[Bender0x7D1]

I think this is a great thing. While it is less expensive to download free alternatives from the Internet, there are a lot of people who don't trust that method, or don't have the bandwidth to support it. Anything that gets a different name out there is good for competition, which is good for the customer. I think it would have been better to have rolled it out in August - just in time for back-to-school shopping. You could pick up notebooks, pencils, crayons and an office suite for your kids.

Another big plus is the name recognition. Even if products are identical except for the brand name attached, people will buy the name brand. There is also a lot of power in the store's generic brand since it becomes a known brand - even if it is for everything from toothpaste to pasta to paper towels. This should address the fear of the unknown - (read software that doesn't work and is crap) since there is a known name AND a physical location to back it up.

While I doubt this will cause Microsoft any serious worries, I think it will still be a decent venture for Tesco. Even better would be if they brand open-source software directly. Need an OS? TescoBSD. Need to do some image manipulation? TescoGIMP. The cost could be minimal since it would only have to cover the media and the cost of some shelf space - so $5 or less. Or maybe they could charge more (since a lot of people don't trust "cheap" products) with half of the profits feeding back into the open-source community.