The race for market share is on. In spite of Microsoft's huge success with Word, aggressive marketing, and adept claimsmanship, WordPerfect still has more than 17 million users on all platforms, with 11 million DOS users and 6 million Windows users. It's still one of the single largest categories of software.
Success here guarantees high volume sales and giant revenues.
This means if the customer wants the word processor in your suite, you have a much better chance of making the sale. WordPerfect's theory is that now is the time. Lotus has continued to lose market share to Microsoft in the Suite market and word processing is not the Lotus Suite's strong point. WordPerfect doesn't expect to gain a lot of market share at Microsoft's expense, but it does expect to end up Number Two in the Suite market. It expects to do that quickly, and largely on the basis of leading the way with its word processing product.