Sun To Sell Office Suite At Retail In Japan

[Steve Bildermann]

Beginning Feb. 5, SourceNext Corp., a Japanese distributor, will begin offering the StarSuite – the name given to the Japanese version of StarOffice – for 1,980 yen, or less than twenty dollars. It marks the first that either StarOffice or StarSuite products have been offered on an annual subscription basis by a retailer, Sun said.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1439311,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Star Office information

[Cubed]

I've been worried about Sun's business model for a while. Java is good, but it's not making any money. Neither is Solaris for all but a few hardcore UNIX devotees running SPARCS.

OpenOffice.org is the free (dev) version of StarOffice. This will not be a moneyspinner either.

[cstaylor]

Worry more about your own bread-and-butter, Microsoft, who just had their first flat quarter. Guess batsu-box and their overpriced Office suite isn't cutting the mustard anymore.

[moog]

Worry more about your own bread-and-butter, Microsoft, who just had their first flat quarter. Guess batsu-box and their overpriced Office suite isn't cutting the mustard anymore.

um, what flat quarter are you talking about?

MS doesn't announce earnings until the 22nd. if you're referring to last quarter, it sure wasn't flat.

"Microsoft reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $2.6 billion, or 24 cents a share, compared with $2 billion, or 19 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Revenue rose 6% to $8.2 billion from $7.8 billion a year ago."

[cstaylor]

How it does this is no trick. It has profit margins on its two major products of over eighty per cent. The rest of the products, from handhelds to MSN and the Xbox are all horrific money losers. Its finances are so opaque and badly presented, that it can shuffle money around from one part of the company to another without anyone noticing. Make too much money one quarter? Stash it in the closet labeled investments, or write off some losses. Not making the numbers? Cash in some assets and make a 'profit'.

Overall, it has been able to show a smooth earnings curve, and surprise on the upside every time it reports a quarter. Monopolies and almost no cost to make your physical product other than R&D has its advantages.

[moog]

"Of note for Microsoft: robust back-to-school PC sales; a 51% spike in MSN ad sales, helping the Internet service post its first operating profit; and strong Xbox sales.

The inquirer is a radical MS hater site that has little or no credibility. If their 'robbing-peter-to-pay-paul' theory had any truth to it, MS couldn't possibly continue to grow their cash reserves at the rate in which they do (nearly $60B cash now). They and the rest of their ilk can't stand the idea that MS is successful, that's all.

But we digress from the orginal topic ...

[cstaylor]

OpenOffice is pretty good. We're testing it in our IT group before we roll it out to the rest of the company, but it's a good savings. The biggest problem we ran into so far is that it doesn't support Microsoft's Active Directory software publishing method (so the machines will have it installed automatically).

[omae mona]

I haven't had the need to use anything but OpenOffice.org for about 2 years now. The only exceptions are cases where I needed macro compatibility with Excel. Other than that, I've been happily exchanging documents with my Microsoft-saddled colleagues.