Marketing strategy

Reinier van Loon R.L.J.M.W.van.Loon at inter.nl.net
Fri Apr 10 10:56:52 UTC 1998


Squeakers,

I think I have a marketing strategy for Squeak. If we look at the market,
we see a lot of people using Windows. So, why not reuse this? What would
happen if we would offer Windows to these users across all platforms? I.e.
it looks like Windows but it is Squeak with a Windows look and feel!
(Windows is not that bad, I assume quite bright people have thought about
its user interface and design).

OK, it might be overkill in a Windows environment, but hey they can use the
same interface on Unix, PowerPC, OS/2 or whatever.

Of course, there remains the problem of the application software. But we
don't have to think about what is needed. Apparently all what is needed in
a business environment is an office suite (wordprocessor, spreadsheet,
agenda, address list and mail) AND some way to access ye olde mainframe
(3270 link). And of course importcapabilities for reading existing
documents and so on (considered investments). So, suppose we would develop
such a suite...

And for applications not yet present in Smalltalk they can still run them
in the appropriate environment.

A bigger problem might be supporting games. We shouldn't underestimate the
power of games when it comes to deciding which OS people use. It is crucial
to support games (look at M$ and its DirectX).

Substitute OS/2 or X-Windows for Windows and you know what we're getting
at. After the inside is all Squeak, we can start merging the look and feel
components (and we don't even have to worry about Java).

I don't think Microsoft, Sun, IBM and others would be too glad with such an
initiative. On the other hand, it could lead to press releases like the one
of April 1, 1998.

Why this path? Well, lots of users means lots of money and money makes
things possible.

Cheers, Reinier.

---
Want to express your thoughts? Use Smalltalk.
---
Reinier van Loon (rvloon at inter.nl.net or reinier at 2share.com)
Squeak Download Area at
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/R.L.J.M.W.van.Loon/Squeak/download.html





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