7. Lotus skips Windows. Loyalty sometimes comes at a steep price. Lotus 1-2-3 was the spreadsheet king in the early 1990s. But Lotus stuck with DOS and bet on OS/2, a cooperative OS project between IBM and Microsoft. But the cooperation was a feint, as Microsoft secretly worked on Windows 95. Microsoft would later dump OS/2, leaving Lotus stuck in the past (DOS) and committed to a finite future (OS/2).
By the time Lotus reversed course for Windows, it was too late for 1-2-3. Excel already had huge market momentum. The spreadsheet is the killer application for many businesses, much more than the word processor. Lotus 1-2-3 appeared to be an unstoppable product in the early 1990s. It was a Microsoft platform switch, and not a better product (at least then), that broke 1-2-3.
That was a moment in time where I had a front row seat. More "lucky breaks" at the link.
Link: Microsoft Watch: Microsoft's 10 Lucky Breaks
Comment posted by Carl Tyler03/13/2009 02:19:45 PM
Homepage: http://www.iminstant.com
I personally Windows 3.1 was more important to Microsoft that Windows 95. Windows 3.1 was what killed OS/2, it ran faster and "ran" DOS apps. Also by the time Windows 95 had shipped Lotus had already lost more than 50% spreadsheet marketshare to Microsoft, the battle was already over.
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred03/13/2009 04:04:13 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Carl: And I don't think that the first release of 1-2-3 for Windows did much to stem the tide, either, as I recall. I believe that it was late, and didn't have much going for it other than a new interface. Meanwhile, Excel owned the Windows space. And the product that was the reason why people (and companies) bought PC's died a slow, lingering death.
Comment posted by Charles Robinson03/13/2009 04:43:37 PM
Homepage: http://www.cubert.net
Carl - there have been a lot of journalistic mess ups like this recently. One article I read this week claimed that IBM manufactured the Intel CPU in the original XBox. Another today claimed that HP "would soon enter the networking market". Now this one has the history of Windows, DOS and Lotus all mixed up. Do these so-called journalists not research anything?
The first word processor I personally used was a DOS-based tool called TextraWrite or something like that. After that it was a jump directly into Microsoft Office. I never used Lotus products until I started with Notes in 1999. I was aware of Lotus, I just never used their products.
BlogSphere V1.3.1
Join The WebLog Revolution at BlogSphere.net