Corel Corp claims it’s beginning to see tangible success from cutting the price of its flagship WordPerfect suite to take advantage of the boom in sub-$1,000 PCs (CI No 3,364). CEO Michael Cowpland says the new positioning, coupled with addition of the Naturally Speaking product from Dragon Systems Inc, has helped boost the company’s market share to 30% from about 25% previously. At the time of the price cuts, Corel also admitted that it more or less existed in a Microsoft Corp environment and began work on bridging the compatibility gap between WordPerfect and Office. Cowpland insists that work along those lines is going well and that an alpha version of WordPerfect Suite 9 with the first fruits of that labor is due in a few weeks. Also the XML and HTML support being worked into Office 2000 will give Corel another route to compatibility. Corel Print Office, the recently-launched publishing suite for the small and home office market, has also seen steady initial sales – although not a barn burner out of the gate, in the words of the CEO – and should bring in increased revenue as it is ramped up in the next few weeks in connection with a concerted marketing push.
Looking at x86
Of course Corel has its fingers in many pies at the moment, including hardware and Windows-on-Java says it’s shipped several hundred of its $800 StrongARM/Linux-based NetWinder DM developer boxes and now plans to market six additional configurations, up from the three it’s already described (CI No 3,407). It’s talking about putting the whole line up on Intel Corp x86 hardware too. Already due by year-end are the web server (WS), diskless thin client (TC) aimed at finance, medical and reservation applications; and corporate/government Java (JC) models. The Java model will host a JVM as well as Sun Microsystems Inc’s JavaOS, by which we assume it means the JavaOS for Business kernel IBM Corp helped Sun breath life back into. New NetWinders are the LC, RF and VC. LC, the Linux computer follow-on to the application-specific TC, is aimed at corporate and government markets and intended to be a low-cost alternative to Windows desktops. The router/firewall RF is a sister for WS, addressing ISP security and routing markets. Both are due this year. VC is the long-gestating VC Corel video network computer once known as VideoNC, which is expected to see the light of day until mid-1999 for CTI, voice and video applications. The CorelVideo digital camera and video conferencing products will be available for use with it. For the point-of-sale, kiosk and embedded markets it has board-level Linux solutions. After bagging Sybase Inc as the first OEM for its jBridge Windows-on-Java technology – what it calls a second-generation Citrix Systems product – Corel says it’s in discussions with other prospects including Inprise Inc. With WordPerfect 8.0 only just going to production Corel says WordPerfect 9.0 alphas will go out in a few weeks with general delivery slated for the beginning of next year.
