“Sometimes I get totally ticked off about bad high-tech reporting and the feeding frenzy one story can generate,” Joe Wilcox writes for JupiterResearch. “Yesterday, CNET News.com ran an outrageous story suggesting that Apple’s iWork had eclipsed Corel WordPerfect sales and that, according to the headline, ‘Apple’s iWork emerges as rival to Microsoft Office.’ Wrong on both assertions.”
“According to JupiterResearch surveys, based on usage, WordPerfect is No. 2, behind Microsoft Office in the consumer, SMB and enterprise markets (roughly 15 percent in each market). I can’t speak for retail sales. CNET News.com used another analyst firm’s retail data. My problem isn’t with that other firm’s data but how CNET News.com used it to make something out of absolutely nothing,” Wilcox writes. “The data used to state CNET News.com’s position is limited to a single sales channel… iWork isn’t an Office suite. It’s even a stretch to call the software, which contains two programs, a Works package on par with Microsoft Works… CNET mistakenly treats iWork and Office retail sales like market share…”
Wilcox writes, “JupiterResearch surveys show that more than 60 percent of consumers, the majority with Windows, run Office on their primary home PCs. Among businesses, Office usage tops 90 percent. Assuming that Windows is on 95 percent of PCs and Mac OS on another 5 percent, the iWork numbers don’t add up. Even if every Mac user in that presumed 5 percent bought iWork, Office’s dominance on that other 95 percent would easily eclipse the upstart… I rally to Corel’s defense because this CNET News.com story is spreading, across blogsites and other news sites. There was too much bad technology reporting in 2005. There’s no reason 2006 has to be the same way.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wilcox is correct, of course. Any discerning reader of the CNET report would arrive at the same conclusions. However, Wilcox fails to give iWork the credit it’s due: more Mac users are using iWork in place of certain aspects of Microsoft Office (Pages instead of Word, Keynote instead of PowerPoint); how many more users are doing so is the real question.
Advertisement: iWork’06. Create, present and publish your work in style. $79. Free shipping.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple iWork passes Corel to become distant No. 2 in U.S. retail sales to Microsoft Office – January 23, 2006
Apple announces iWork ’06 with 3-D charts, advanced image editing tools & spreadsheet-like tables – January 10, 2006
I’m iWork all the way!
Who Cares. I’m first. I’m God.
s- you’re an ignorant fool is what you are!
Funny, Wilcox is a bit hypocritical in that he criticizes CNET for treating retail sales as market share, then uses Mac retail share numbers (5%) in place of market share (or what I believe he means ‘installed base’). Apple’s US retail sales for the Mac are at 4%. It’s installed base is surely more than 5%.
I don’t doubt that he’s right, but I just find it funny that he’s complaining about the exact same thing that Mac users have been claiming the media has done when talking about Mac market share.
All I can say is I know more people who use iWork than use Corel WordPerfect Office.
What it says pretty loudly is that if Corel was making a suite for the Mac, they’d be selling more copies to USERS, you know the kind of people that upgrade every year regardless and NOT according to business cycles?
That’s where a large chunk of change resides right now, and Apple’s tapping it hard.
Numbers can always be twisted and turned to say what you want them to say, BUT even he has to agree that by SOME metric, iWork is clearly outselling Corel and that, to me, is pretty impressive. In other words, you mean to tell me that iWork selling JUST to Mac users via retail sold more than Corel??? And then you look at the real numbers and iWork didn’t sell that many?
Does Corel even MARKET to users anymore?
Replaced Powerpoint when Keynote 1.0 came out. But had to keep Powerpoint for compatibility issues (PC Clients that need to edit something themselves). Nevertheless, Keynote managed to make my company make money: We had this client, a cruise company, that we made graphic design for them, and for all of our presentations we used Keynote. The we’re blown away. Pretty soon, they hired us in order to make the presentations of their new port / building to the government and a bunch of other related companies. A 4 month job. Just had to show up with our Powerbook with Keynote 2, a projector, a bluetooth phone and Salling clicker software. Made a ton of money.
Does Corel even MARKET to users anymore?
What’s a user?
Uhm, the numbers cited add up if you believe the Mac installed base is 15.5%, and not 5%.
As for Joe’s point, he’s right, the story is a non-starter, and CNet is a rag.
Who give a flying <bleep>. Last I looked Corel Word Perfect didn’t run on Macs…
@Corel Marketing.
Yes. Comes standard with all DELLS
“JupiterResearch surveys show that more than 60 percent of consumers, the majority with Windows, run Office on their primary home PCs. Among businesses, Office usage tops 90 percent.”
Interesting… Does that mean MS loses 1/3 of their share when individuals get to choose?
“However, Wilcox fails to give iWork the credit it’s due: more Mac users are using iWork in place of certain aspects of Microsoft Office (Pages instead of Word, Keynote instead of PowerPoint); how many more users are doing so is the real question.”
Really Nameless? And you know this how?
Funny that all that crap articles written about Apple from just a few years back were never defended as well as this one from CNET.
Why doesn’t Apple come up with a simplified interface for FileMaker Pro (maybe call it just FileMaker or iFile or Files) and include it with iWork?
What’s more surprising is how quickly the fanboys here jump all over CNET whenever they even hint at being unhappy with something Apple yet have nothing to say when they are accused to spinning this bit of info in an overtly pro-Apple fashion.
I thought CNET was “in the back pocket of MS”, or “Anti-Apple”. What happened?
Keynote is fantastic for prototyping Web site designs. You can take a prototype, turn it into a presentation, pass it around as PDF, or quicktime, and paste it in other documents.
Pages makes quick work of writing documentation for the same reasons. iPhoto is a great repository for web site design screenshots. Drop em in Keynote or Pages with the media browser and you’ve got quick documentation for any Web project. You can use Keynote for workflow too, although Omnigraffle is better.
I also use Pages to start Word documents. It’s so much easier to format page layouts in Pages, then tweak them to look right in Word.
Pages is the word processor “for the rest of us”.
Andy C. – Spot on! Apple’s installed base is something like 16% circa fall 2004 or so, according the the SPA. Now Linux, Sun and the other BSD’s also have at least some share of the pie. I doubt that Windoze has more 80% (and it probably has less than that).
Apple and Microsoft’s written agreement to provide MS Office for at another 5 years pretty much seals the fate of iWork. iWork may be developed behind the scenes just in case, but I suspect Apple told Microsoft that it will make it’s own professional office suite without assurance Microsoft will not pull the plug. This is both good and bad news. There appears to be no replacement for AppleWorks in terms of a full lower end office solution in the pike. I bit the bullet and bought Office 2004. iWork just doesn’t do it for me. How many ordinary people actually care about keynote? I don’t. That leaves iWork, and anemic entry-level word processor that is more kewl than practical. Hell, it doesn’t even have grammar check. Sheesh. Having only one viable solution for a high-end Office Suite is unacceptable.
I get this eery feeling that development of iWork is purposely being slowed to appease Microsoft. If iWork added a nice spreadsheet and a Entourage-type mail application, plus a drawing app, it would be a no-brainer to buy. The current iteration, however, falls short of features and, therefore, enticement. The trend is set and I’m not liking it too much. I hope Apple will pleasantly surprise me sometime soon and start getting serious about attracting business users. The chess match between Microsoft and Apple is getting old. It’s time to lead.
iWork might be fine for individuals. But who are you going to share with? Sorry, I don’t need another application with proprietary formats. If iWorks supported the OpenDocument format, I’d buy it in a second. Do you hear me Apple?
iMaki is on the money. An Excel replacement isn’t coming.
Word Perfect and iWork are irrelevant for all practical purposes. MS Office rules this market and that will not change unless MS pulls the plug on the mac version. MS Office is truly cross platform and personally compatibility with the rest of the world is more important than the ease of use of iWork. Besides it is word processing for the basic functions they are pretty similar. I have been to trade shows and presentations all over the world and I have never seen any done on anything other than Power Point.
Let’s see, I use Apple’s Mail, Address Book, and iCal. All outstanding programs that integrates easily seamlessly with my .mac account and bluetooth cell phone in a way that puts others to shame. All I need is a great word processor and presentation program that doesn’t make me look like everybody else. With the exception of a spreadsheet that I have in AppleWorks and don’t need, that about covers it. Yep, I’d call that an office suite.
Jeff,
There’s already a Office Suite that supports the OpenDocument format, and guess what? IT’S FREE!!
JEG,
An Excel replacement isn’t needed. With all this talk about iWork and Corel, I’ve found several posts where people state, like myself, that they’ve never used the spreadsheet or database apps in either Office OR AppleWorks. The fact is that iWork IS selling and selling to people who don’t have a ton of information already tied up in Microsoft. If YOU happen to require Office, that’s fine. ANYONE who needs to exchange editable documents requires Office. BUT for those that don’t iWork simply works.
If you haven’t seen anything done on anything other than PowerPoint, then you OBVIOUSLY didn’t see Intel’s presentation at CES this year.
The Other Steve,
Agreed! Maybe the whole idea of “Office Suite” is dated which is why everyone feels that “Suite” requires 4-5 apps without being able to explain what your average user (NOT business, or home business user, you know, individuals…yes, they still exist!) would do with a spreadsheet or database that they couldn’t do better with a dedicated application (Like Delicious Library) and with a LOT less training.
JEG,
You haven’t seen a Keynote presentation, yet? Too bad – You’re really missing out. Keynote makes PowerPoint look like PowerPointasaurus.
Corel makes the most bug ridden unfinished code on this planet.
Yeah, Pages is really not the same thing as Corel. And if Corel was out for Mac, I for one would buy it in a heartbeat.