Corel bills its WordPerfect Office software as 'the world's leading alternative to Microsoft Office'. But when it comes to US retail sales, Corel lost the no. 2 spot in 2005 to a somewhat unlikely competitor: Apple Computer's iWork. According to market researcher NPD, Apple grabbed a 2.7 percent unit share, while Corel had a 1.6 percent share. Microsoft maintained its dominance with nearly 95 percent of unit sales.
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Member since:2006-01-10
Not to nitpick on your anecdotal data. But I hope Apple does not think like you do and not make a spreadsheet. Most people around me (the me-centric world view) use Excel pretty intensively and Powerpoint moderately. A note on the side, you say "***most*** users don't use..." then say that..."These people make up only about 5%..."...then "All they use Word and Access..." therefore "Pages (a word processing software) will work for 99% of people"...The numbers are definitely creatively used...Obviously did not use Excel. Of course, this could mean many things. e.g. you support 5% of the staff only and they use some form of database management that is inbuilt (maybe hidden) in Pages). Interesting... :-)
Member since:2005-07-06
Wow! We use spreadsheets for tracking just about everything at work! Without Excel our operation would come to a standstill...
Spreadsheets are used for editing and manipulating customer data, managing our deployment process, tracking projects, etc. It's a great, generic tool. I am also guessing that the finance dept. uses it... I am just talking about the IT group...
Member since:
2005-07-06
***Most*** users that I support at work (Windows users) don't use spreadsheets, or presentation programs. These people make up only about 5% of staff. E-mail comes with every computer. All they use is Word and Access and they don't use most of the capabilities of either and could get buy with something will only about 5% of the features.
What most of them really want is a wordprocessing/layout program that is very easy to use. Pages would be more than enough for 99% of people I support. Note that we support about 10,000 desktop computers.