Office 2010 Sales Disappoint NPD
PrintMicrosoft's latest productivity suite's first few weeks on the market have been disappointing, according to Stephen Baker, NPD Group's VP of industry analysis. The market research firm's Weekly Tracking Service found Office 2010 trailing its predecessor, both in terms of unit sales and revenue, when only the first two weeks were considered.
Baker blamed Office 2010's lackluster start to the fact that it was “launched into a saturated market” and that too in the middle of a “seasonally slow period for PC purchases which have, over time, proven to be a have a strong impact on Office sales.” However, Microsoft can take heart from that fact that Office 2010 has improved upon Office 2007's sales pattern so far this year.
“Office 2007 was a radical new design that certainly helped deliver a lot of curious buyers and it was launched nearly parallel with Vista, adding a good deal of promotional activity in the software aisle, both of which likely helped drive initial sales of Office 2007,” Baker wrote in a blog post. “While Office 2010 has many compelling new features, it is always an uphill battle to sell a high installed base product based on new features alone.”
The analyst sees tremendous promise in the key card program, which lets users activate Office 2010 on preloaded machines using a product key (no disc required). Baker revealed that the key card program currently accounts for “about one-third of the unit volume.”
Baker does not foresee web-based productivity applications posing any real threat to Office 2010 in the immediate future: “Over time it is certainly likely that we will see some slowdown in retail sales as consumers alter their productivity software habits, but that time is not now. Mainstream consumers have not embraced the concept of the cloud, nor are they likely in the short to mid-term, making most of the questions around free software moot.”
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Zazubovich
July 14, 2010 at 1:07pm
The ribbon sucks ass, basically, and was a poor design choice and poor marketing decision. People that want Apple style interfaces can have them by buying Apple stuff-people who want to do things efficiently and without a lot of drama, bells and whistles use the interface they are used to using. The cloud hype that comes with 2007-2010 isn't selling to business clients, the web based help is a disaster if you are not on a network (field jobs), and incompatibility between versions of Office causes shrieks of terror in users who have to exchange documents for review and are forced to run conversion scripts back and forth.
Can I have the new calendar year version of fail?
hades_2100
July 14, 2010 at 10:01am
Although I run Office 2010 (thanks Technet), I really do not see a difference between 2007 and 2010. Yes, the globe thingy in the upper left is now a FILE box, but functionality wise, it's the same.
Mind you, I still hate the ribbon, and use Office 2003 whenever possible.
hades
Blues22475
July 14, 2010 at 7:59am
...don't see the difference between Office 2007 and 2010. Perhaps that's one potential reason for failure: what's the difference between 2007 and 2010?
One good merit is that the keycard system does work, and it makes thing simpler.
-----------------------------------------
Ignorance is man's greatest enemy.
Baer
July 14, 2010 at 7:49am
One reason is that when MS introduced Office 2003 and 2007 they did it at events and they invited many of us to those events, they showed us the improvements and they gave us a free copy of the latest Office. We tried it and we liked it and seeded it into our companies and clients. With Office 2010 they did not do this and I, for one, just have never bothered. I will eventually get around to looking at it but as I have to buy that first copy to try the final version it is just not high on my priority list. As far as the ribbon interface, once you get used to it you generally like it. I know I like it better than the old style drop down menus.
i7 920 DO @ 3.64, Asus Rampage II, Vertex 2 SSD boot and OS, 2 V-Raptors in RAID-0 programs, 1 Tb RE3 Data, GTX 285 OCE driving 2 24" Samsung 244T's, 12 Gb Dominator GT, 1 KW Corsair GTX, Asus Xonar D2X, Optical drives Etc.
quickone
July 14, 2010 at 6:25am
For the beta users out there it is good until 31 Octobe, my university just got it in stock, Professional Plus for $45. I've loved the Beta, will be buying the full version soon
~~The difference between insanity and genius is merely succes~~
BuLLg0d
July 14, 2010 at 2:57pm
So far so good with me, I got Office 2010 professional for 9.95 through my school system's purchasing program. I paid an additional 6 bucks for the dvd so, with shipping, Office Pro 2010 for 20 bucks ain't too shabby.
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