Borland International Inc’s Phillipe Kahn spent a lot of his time vigorously defending his decision to sell the Quattro Pro V for MS-DOS and Windows spreadsheet for $50. The rationale is that it is the only way to get innovation onto people’s desks, he says: we are in a world where the customer compares one ad with another ad. So what you end up comparing is the skill of the copywriters. The question then becomes how can you make sure that as many people in the world as possible try it. Borland is in the upgrade business, says Kahn, and its much, much vaunted object technology – the same technology that caused the initial product to be late – will ensure a swift upgrade cycle. As for the morality of starting a pricing war – Kahn denies that he started it Bill [Gates] has been waging a deadly price war for three years – but non-one noticed he said, referring to Microsoft Works and its seven bundled applications. All we are doing is applying suite pricing to stand-alone products, he says, adding wryly: but you can’t expect Wall Street to figure that out.
