Is Microsoft Office Invincible, Indeed? - Part Two

Another standard, user experience 

The installations of WordPerfect was estimated 4 million to 5 million in 2010. And it's revenue was estimated to $49.4 million in 2009 by Gartner. 

Although it’s market share keeps shrinking by intense competition and the market interest does not seem to exist for the product, but the revenue is still not so negligible and there is something interesting. 

In legal market, it’s influence and the affection to the product were conspicuously long lasting. It is most likely due to some distinct features in WordPerfect. One of them is very nice paragraph numbering and another is ‘reveal code’ that is a function to show all the formatting codes, so that the resulting document doesn't have any strange hidden areas. 

Reveal code in WordPerfect

These features might result from the efforts to focus on legal market defensively. Interestingly, it shows that once user experience on any functionality is accustomed and occupied for a long enough period time, users can be stubborn to stick to that experience. And user experience seems to be mostly bound to user interface and functionalities.

Adversely, this fact seems to lead most of competitors, even Google, to abandon their unique user interface by cloning MSO's. And it lowers entry barrier and learning curve obviously.

Furthermore, some players seem to be obsessed by perfect cloning at the cost of sacrificing their uniqueness. It seems to make it able to reduce costs for development and marketing but, at the same time, it looks like to make their deficiencies much noticeable by allowing direct comparison with MSO and undermine their credibility unfavorably. 

Koingsoft Spreadsheet 2010 (*image from softpicks.net)

The cost for migration doesn't seem so impractical

Unlike the inherent obstacle from network effect we've seen in the previous part, many  researches on migration from Microsoft Office to another product including Michael A. Silver's "Cost Model for Upgrading Microsoft Office or Moving to OpenOffice.org" seems to provide some grounds that the user experience itself bound to the user interface and functionalities can be adjusted to new application with affordable costs. 

However, it cannot be denied as well that users are strongly inclined to stay their experiences, if the change is not enforced. 

There remains another crucial user experience which is profoundly challenged by Web-based Office suites. It will be addressed in the last part. 

• Part one: Network effect, the characteristics of Office suite market 
• Part two: Another standard, user experience 
• Part three: As a matter of fact, Microsoft is a franchise company
• Part four: Growing opportunities and new battle of ideas

*The dispute over the rise and fall of WordPerfect has been lasting for a long time. If you are interested in the history of WordPerfect. "Almost Perfect" by Pete Peterson is worth to read.