Steve talks to Bill (opens in a new window)

But here’s what I overheard (yep, I was there too):

Cheers!

Sen Ze

In the background, heavy development was in place for Microsoft’s next big revolution.

No, it wasn’t the Vista Operating System.

It’s an iPhone, minus the phone, and maybe 50 times bigger – which opens up lots of other mind-boggling possibilities.

This product is going to bring people closer together socially in a way they’ve never experienced, because it’s now even more fun to be together physically.

Not only that, my Dad can finally use a “computer” without realizing it’s one because it’s dead simple to use (think: “play”), and because it doesn’t look and behave like a computer.

And he doesn’t have to own it either (which is a big factor considering it’s a lot more expensive than a desktop computer).

And if you own it, it can also be used as the ultimate remote control for your TV, because it’s impossible for you to lose it, ever.

Microsoft should have reserved the “WOW” word for this product instead of Vista.

Don’t you think?

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/microsoft/microsoft-bites-back.htm

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Surface, iPhone, Steve Jobs, table computer, Vista

Doctors
Architects
Mechanics
Instructors
Trainers
Tutors
Teachers
Consultants
Real Estate Agents
Insurance Agents
Stockbrokers
Feng Shui Masters
Accountants
Lawyers
Engineers
Authors
Musicians
Artists
Mechanics
Judges

Yes, they’re all experts at what they do.

But even better, and even more stunning, is the fact that the vast majority of them don’t have a web site at their own Personal Domain Name that bears their actual name!

Just do a quick check, right now.

How many experts around you do?

Right – few, to NONE.

But a Personal Domain Name for experts is a no-brainer.

Why?

Here are just seven reasons:

Reason #1: We remember other people by their NAMES first

Then we’ll associate that name with the company they work with – if we bother to do this additional linking exercise in the first place.

The company they’re associated with is USUALLY the next thing we’ll think of, AFTER we’ve got a name on the person, or if we can’t remember his name.

We associate other people by their names first and foremost because we need a LABEL to link that person with.

But a company can be home to more than one employee.

And its employess can move to another company over time.

Or it can die within 5 years (as most businesses do).

Whereas people have an average lifespan of 70-80 years.

And so a company is a distinct entity that is totally separate from the person.

Even if Microsoft is Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is Apple.

(They aren’t, actually.)

Because you’ll call them “Bill” or “Steve”, not “Microsoft” or “Apple” respectively.

It’s “Bill” first, then “Microsoft”. Or “Steve” first, then “Apple”.

It’s just the way the brain works.

THIS IS A FACT.

You know it is.

AND IF YOU’RE AN EXPERT YOURSELF, YOU CAN EITHER TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, OR WATCH YOUR COMPETITORS DO IT AT YOUR EXPENSE.

Reason #2: The Internet Is All Around Us

And with the Internet being such a big part of our lives now and in time to come – a Personal Domain Name will soon become a necessity.

Practically everybody has heard of it and the World Wide Web.

And hundreds of millions of people use it every single day to do their research, find information or best of all, buy products or services.

And you can bet that shirt on your back that some of your Prospects/Customers will use it at some point to look for you.

Over 40% of my Prospects/Customers find me by typing my name directly into their Internet Browsers followed by a “.com” at the back.

That’s a HUGE percentage by any means.

And that’s potential Prospects/Customers lost if you don’t have a Personal Domain Name in the name you’re known for, especially when you’re an expert at what you do and people look out for you for help!

Reason #3: It Costs Less Than $10/Year

A Personal Domain Name costs only $8.10/year at this Domain Name Registrar.

For less than $10/year, your status has now been elevated to one that is higher than everybody else WITHOUT a Personal Domain Name.

You suddenly stand out. You’re different. You have something that is related to the Internet in some way.

You’re now cooler than everybody else carrying a cell or mobile phone but don’t have a Personal Domain Name!

Reason #4: Your Web Site At Your Personal Domain Name Sells Your Services For You

Your Personal Domain Name is the address for your web site. SOLOBIS enhances some of the best-looking WordPress themes for your use.

You simply focus on your content by writing about you and what you do, and selling any related items you may have there as well by putting up information about them and linking it to an order form for orders to be made via credit card.

And writing and publishing at your Blog for the world to see is as easy as writing and sending e-mail to your contacts!

Reason #5: You Have More Than One Profit Center

The SOLOBIS Personal Domain Name Plan comes with the “SOLOBIS Personal Domain Name Profits E-Course” worth $197 that will teach you more ways to profit from your Personal Domain Name apart from just selling your services/expertise on your Blog above.

Discover some other mind-bogglingly easy ways that anybody can do to profit from their Personal Domain Name – by simply using it!

Reason #6: You Get Express Listing In OMNICITI

OMNICITI.com is the world’s first Personal Domain Name Directory that only lists web sites with Personal Domain Names. It currently has over 620 links and is growing every single day.

Once you’ve posted a good profile about yourself on your Blog, you can then submit your Personal Domain Name to it for listing (just make sure you follow its guidelines).

You will be seen by others who are checking out other people for certain expertise or help, all over the world.

Reason #7: One Day, Everybody Will Have His Own Personal Domain Name

This is my brain-dead prediction – and I’m having lots of fun seeing it becoming a reality day by day. I’m sure you can see it too by now.

It’s been happening since the World Wide Web started – but it’s about to take on a speed it’s never seen before.

So get your preferred Personal Domain Name now before they’re all gone forever.

By being here, you’ve been alerted to the next great trend, worldwide.

What’s more, you can actually see it happening in real time.

How lucky you are.

Click below now and get your own Personal Domain Name before it’s gone forever:

http://www.SOLOBIS.com

Sen Ze

P.S. Tell an Expert you care for about this development. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/blog/an-important-asset-for-experts.htm

Technorati Tags: expert, asset, asset for experts, blog, wordpress, wordpress templates, internet business, internet marketing, cell phone, mobile phone, domain name, personal domain name, project SEGO, SOLOBIS, Microsoft, Bill Gates, Apple, Steve Jobs, doctors, architects, mechanics, instructors, trainers, tutors, teachers, consultants, Real Estate Agents, Insurance Agents, stockbrokers, Feng Shui Masters, accountants, lawyers, engineers, authors, musicians, artists, judges, profit centers, OMNICITI, personal domain name directory, internet

The keys are laid out in the following order:

QWERTYUIOP
ASDFGHJKL
ZXCVBNM

You’ll place your fingers on the “Home Row”, which is the 2nd row. From there, your fingers travel up to the 1st row or down to the 3rd row or remain on the 2nd row to find the right key to type.

Almost 100% of the computers in the world have this QWERTY-Style keyboard which has remained practically unchanged since it was introduced more than 140 years ago in 1874 for the typewriter.

If you’ve learned how to be a reasonably proficient typist using this keyboard, you will be unlikely to want to switch to another keyboard with a different layout even if that other layout enables you to type 50% quicker.

There is such a keyboard layout and it’s called the Dvorak keyboard. It was invented in 1932 by August Dvorak and his team after almost 20 years in development starting in 1914.

Here’s how the keys are laid out on this board:

    PYFGCRL
AOEUIDHTNS
    QJKXBMWVZ

With a Dvorak keyboard, you can type 5,000 words on the Home Row alone! Compare that to the QWERTY keyboard that gives you a mere 300 words or so.

When you don’t have to move your fingers up to the 1st row or down to the 3rd row to type the letters, you’ve saved a lot of finger movements. In the process you multiply your typing speed significantly.

You also make less spelling errors, which makes you even more productive.

The world’s fastest typist in 1985, Barbara Blackburn, could type 212 words per minute on a Dvorak keyboard!

Now it’s likely that you’ll gain a faster typing speed with a Dvorak layout, if you’re trained to use it.

If you deal with words for a living – like an author, copywriter, or a data entry person – you’ll be able to potentially double your output in the same duration of time.

This means more money for you in the same amount of time with less effort.

The question then is, why are the vast majority of the population still using the QWERTY keyboard?

Because of the Trapping factor that I discussed in my previous post on Entrapment.

The QWERTY keyboard had a long headstart over the Dvorak keyboard. While it wasn’t the greatest layout to use, it was the only common layout for a long time.

Typing schools taught the QWERTY keyboard. Thousands, and later millions, of typists were trained to use it.

With almost everybody on earth using a QWERTY keyboard, there’s really no reason for computer manufacturers to provide you with a different keyboard layout so that you can type faster.

The benefit to you is that you can go to any typewriter or computer and immediately start typing without any need to familiarize yourself with the keyboard’s layout first.

In addition, you probably didn’t know of the existence of the Dvorak keyboard in the first place.

But even if you do, the simple thought that you’ll need to re-train your brain to type using a Dvorak keyboard is probably putting you off from even attempting to do so.

This is because you remember very clearly that it took you many, many hours to master the QWERTY keyboard in the first place.

The Trapping Factor here is the TIME and EFFORT needed to re-train yourself to a new keyboard layout.

It may only take you a few extra hours to do the re-training, but those few extra hours are a few extra hours too many for just about all of us.

We have many things to fit within our hours nowadays, and re-training simply isn’t one of them.

August Dvorak died in 1975. He complained bitterly:

“I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race. They simply don’t want to change!”

Learn from the wisdom of Dvorak right there.

Does this mean that you should never compete with business that have trapping factors already in their favor in operation?

Yes, if you’re competing based on your product being “better”.

We don’t care if it’s better in this case because we’ve trapped ourselves by refusing to re-train our brains for this purpose. It’s just too painful to even think about it.

No, if you’re competing with that business using another wonderful new advantage that business does not have.

Overwhelm us with that new advantage so that we’ll want to change to get it.

Or give us many more wanted advantages beyond the main benefits of the product that not switching will deny us.

Today, there is one possible angle for the Dvorak keyboard for it to have a good chance to doing exactly that.

But first, let’s check out a modern example of the QWERTY keyboard:

Microsoft’s Office Suite
(discussed in my previous post on Entrapment).

Once the masses have been trained on Microsoft’s word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail programs (to name a few), they’re simply unwilling to learn how to use a new word processor, spreadsheet or e-mail.

There’s simply no need to do so unless there are many features the masses want that Microsoft’s Office Suite is not serving.

As you probably know, Microsoft’s programs are so bloated with features that we’re only using maybe 20% of them – so this isn’t a weakness that its competitors can exploit.

The longer Microsoft remains unchallenged, the more trapped we all are.

OpenOffice, Sun Microsystem’s Office Suite which is free, is challenging Microsoft’s dominance.

But it is hardly causing a ripple and most people don’t use it because of the need to re-train themselves to use a new interface and menu.

Thus when you want to challenge Microsoft, don’t do it on its own turf.

Challenge Microsoft where it hurts – in areas where it has no dominance or is weak in – and gain market share this way.

This will give you a much better chance.

Nobody could quite figure out how to do this since the 1980s.

However, due to some recent technological advances, there is at last a semblance of a breakthrough.

And of course the Internet has something to do with it.

With the Internet and the emergence of the World Wide Web plus some exciting new development in web-based software, new advantages were created where none had existed before.

Leading the charge in shooting huge holes in Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism is Yahoo and Google, both giant Internet compaines.

Note the following:

Yahoo is the No.1 Internet Portal in the world.

Google is the No.1 Internet Search Engine in the world.

Yahoo is part of your life because it provides you with lots of services that you can use for free. Check your e-mail, weather, read the news, scan the movie reviews, look for forums, use the calendar, notepad and a zillion other things.

Google is part of your life because you start with it to search for information. Because its search results are very accurate, you continue to use it every single day over Yahoo and Microsoft’s own MSN Search.

Now that they “have a foot in our doors” with their dominance in areas where Microsoft doesn’t have, they can mount a serious challenge to Microsoft in getting us to switch over to their version of an Office Suite.

The battle for control in the Office Suite market is very important because they’re the most basic programs used by the majority of the masses on their computers.

Bill Gates became the richest man and Microsoft the biggest software company in the world doing just that.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

Yahoo takes the “familiar” route in its challenge.

It is starting with its webmail program.

All you need to do to access it is to go to its web site at www.mail.yahoo.com and log in to use it for free.

With Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail program, you’ll need to have access to your own computer that has a copy of this program installed to check, send and reply your e-mail.

However, there is a Trapping Mechanism in Microsoft’s favor.

You see, web-based programs have a major weakness. To execute something (checking for new e-mails, or replying to an e-mail), the web page you’re looking at needs to be refreshed or reloaded in your browser to show the new screen or information.

This slows down things considerably and adds to your frustration if you’re used to using Microsoft’s Outlook as your e-mail program. Installed programs like it usually perform much faster since the processing activity happens on your own computer where you’re the only user.

Because of this, I have stuck to using Outlook for years even though it fills up my computer’s hard disk with downloaded e-mails, or I lose all of them eventually when my hard disk finally crashes which it is bound to do one day.

However, with the recent rise of AJAX technology, a webmail program can now perform and respond almost as fast as a program installed on a computer!

When this happens, this Trapping Mechanism (speed) in favor of Microsoft’s programs is no longer a factor!

You’ve got to see and use it to believe the beauty of this major advancement in web-based software.

But Yahoo isn’t through yet.

Yahoo has now designed its new webmail program to look almost exactly like Microsoft’s Outlook program in terms of look and feel.

Check it out below and see how familiar it looks!

Since Yahoo’s web mail program is very similar in look and feel to Microsoft’s, there is very little re-training to do for users used to Outlook. Thus Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism in “familiarity” much valued by its users in no longer a factor in preventing Yahoo from targeting its users, and getting them to switch over!

Yahoo’s new webmail program is in Beta testing right now. But now that you know what they’re doing – you’ll need to switch your normal HTML Yahoo webmail over to this new version (even if it’s in Beta) because the AJAX technology is way too cool to miss out on!

And what about Google?

It too is riding on AJAX technology to create fast-response web-based programs. It too started with its own version of webmail, called GMail.

However, unlike Yahoo which designed its webmail based on Outlook’s look and feel, GMail designed its webmail around its strongest trait, which is ultra-fast search.

If you’ve ever used Outlook’s Search function to look for an e-mail in your Outlook program, you’ll find it to be painfully slow – sometimes taking up to a few minutes to do so depending on how many e-mails you have downloaded previously.

Google’s advantage in search technology for the web is not only in the very accurate results it brings back in response to your query, but it does it blazingly fast as well – usually within a split second.

If you use GMail to search for your e-mails there, you’ll usually find very relevant results very, very quickly.

Since Google isn’t a real fan of Microsoft (and most of us aren’t), it didn’t take the “familiar” route like Yahoo.

It’s betting that its huge e-mail storage capacity (close to 3GB currently), ultra-fast search feature and other cool and useful features like “Conversations” (where replies to an e-mail are automatically grouped together for you) will win over users trapped in Microsoft’s programs.

It also ensures that the new interface is as easy to learn as possible. You’ll be up to speed with the basic features of GMail within minutes (instead of hours or days). This makes it easy for you to switch over.

Google is taking the “overwhelming you with other advantages route” to get you to re-train yourself because it’s going to be worth it to do so. In any case, it’ll only take a few extra minutes to do so, so this isn’t a real problem to begin with!

And with AJAX technology, you’ll see your e-mails the instant they arrive in your mailbox. You get the feeling it’s even faster than Outlook which has to log into your mail server to check it before downloading it into your computer.

As for the other Microsoft Program like the spreadsheet, Google has its own called Google Spreadsheets. It has also acquired Writely, the web alternative to Microsoft’s Word program.

Both of Google’s web programs also use AJAX technology for speed.

In addition, both exploit Microsoft’s weakness in its computer-installed software – that of collaboration.

It’s very easy to share a document done in Google Spreadsheet or Writely as they can be access online by anybody with the right password. The creator of those documents simply assigns others to share it by e-mailing them the password to access it.

With collaboration, teams of people can change/amend/edit a document as and when necessary and have access to the new document and all their older versions.

With Microsoft’s installed on the user’s computer programs, this isn’t easily done apart from e-mailing every team member the actual document. Keeping track of all changes/amendments/edits will be harder and is very much unorganized.

If that’s not enough – when you use the Collaboration feature, you’re helping Google spread the use of its web-based programs for free!

Google and Yahoo’s web-based software are also free to use. They make money from selling advertising space within the programs.

The free factor is yet another advantage over Microsoft which charges for its Office Suite.

But not to be outdone, Microsoft recognizes the threat and danger coming from Google and Yahoo. It has in the works its own web-based versions of its computer-installed software, as part of their pre-empting strategy, called Office Live.

With its own web-based software in place where the money is made through advertising space and subscriptions for more advanced features, Microsoft is safeguarding its interests should its computer-installed software business ever suffer a major a hit from Google and Yahoo.

But there’s a factor that Microsoft can’t shake off that may just cause a revolution to go the other way.

The anti-Microsoft sentiment among many of its customers around the world.

We love to hate Microsoft because of its inferior products we were forced to use for many, many years.

I could tell you another horror story with its FrontPage program for building web pages when it first came out many years ago, but I’ll spare you the agony.

In any case, the competition between the top 3 800-pound gorillas is a mouth-watering one. The next few years will be a very exciting years indeed.

Getting back to the Dvorak keyboard.

Knowing what you know now, just what angle can it use to give it a better chance of succeeding in getting people to switch over from the QWERTY keyboard, in today’s climate?

Here’s the other advantage in its design:

Because your fingers travel less all over the keyboard when you’re typing with it, you can also prevent “Repetitive Strain Injuries” (RSI) or “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome”.

This is a very painful condition where your hands and arms really hurt after some long hours on a normal keyboard over a period of months or years. They could hurt so bad that you wouldn’t be able to use your hands for anything else, with complete rest being the cure.

This isn’t a “better because it’s faster” advantage which has been proven to fail (the need to be faster on a keyboard may not be desirable if the typist is already very fast with his current keyboard to begin with), but you’ll want it because “it prevents the, or cures your, RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that a QWERTY keyboard causes“.

Focusing on this single advantage gives a much bigger reason for users to switch over (for health reasons).

This will also get more free publicity in the media as well since it’ll benefit the media’s viewers/readers more significantly than simply getting the typing done faster.

Plus there are probably millions of people by now with this condition all over the world that would require relief from pain other than taking drugs. If re-training for a few hours or days on a Dvorak keyboard can help them type normally again without pain for the rest of their lives, they’re more likely do it than for the other reason of speed alone.

Does this make senze to you?

How would you apply the principles above to your own business against your competitors who have strong Trapping Mechanisms in place?

Still using the “I’m better than them” angle?

More mind-busting stuff in my next post!

Warm Regards,
Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/microsoft/business-trapping-factors.htm

I also mentioned that a great product does not necessarily mean you’ll even make enough money with it because your competitors with not-so-great products can sell more of theirs if they use certain marketing strategies that you’re not.

We can learn some of the strategies and tactics used by some of the Master Marketers of not-so-great products and apply them to our great products to:

1. Beat our competitors to a pulp; or

2. Create an impenetrable barrier for new competitors; or

3. Ensure our survival where competition is fierce; or

4. All of the above.

An excellent case in point is Microsoft’s dominant Operating System (OS) software for computers.

It started off as MS-DOS over a quarter of a century ago, and eventually became Windows XP today, with the next version called “Vista” on the way.

Microsoft’s OS is generally felt to be inferior to Apple’s Operating System in many ways, even to this day – but yet it became and remains the dominant OS, powering over 90% of the world’s computers at this very moment.

Over the years, I’ve had my fair share of Microsoft OS crashes, “Illegal Operation” messages, security problems, viruses and so on – yet I still buy computers with the Microsoft OS installed, despite Apple’s best efforts to get me to switch over.

How then did Microsoft become an 800-pound gorilla with such an inferior product, and Apple such a minnow although it has a vastly superior product for so many years?

The answer lies in Bill Gates’ vision, software pirates (you have no idea how much of a debt Bill Gates owe them), some lucky breaks and Microsoft’s competitors’ vital missteps.

Here’s what happened, in a nutshell. It started with IBM and its huge ambitions.

1) The first computer for the consumer were created in 1974/75. They were the Scelbi, Mark-8 Altair and IBM 5100 Computers.

2) IBM, the largest IT company in the world, failed to capture any significant market share through the IBM 5100. I wonder if that huge screen at the left of the console had anything to do with it

3) The Apple II appeared on the scene in 1977. It looked like an oversized calculator with too many buttons. Apple’s legendary design sense were not yet evident then.

4) The demand for home computers was growing steadily leading into 1980.

5) In 1980, IBM wanted to create a new computer for the masses called the “Personal Computer” (PC) to give itself another shot at the growing market.

6) It wanted to do this quickly since Apple and a few other brands were already dominating the market.

7) Because of this urgency, instead of building the entire hardware on their own like they usually would do, its engineers bought off-the-shelf computer parts to put them together to create their PC.

However, it didn’t have an Operating System to run their PC.

9) IBM officials looked for Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation, who suggested that they looked for a Gary Kildall of Digital Research to write an OS for the PC.

10) Gary had written the most successful operating system for computers of that time called “CP/M“.

11) IBM officials went to Gary’s office to meet him, but he was out for the day. They met Mrs. Kildall instead, who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement with them. They left.

12) They then returned to Bill Gates and awarded Microsoft the contract to write the OS. It was called the “PC-DOS“.

13) Bill Gates managed to get IBM to agree to let Microsoft retain the rights to the OS. Microsoft called their OS “MS-DOS“.

14) IBM released the IBM PC in 1981 which became a hit.

15) But because IBM put together its PC using off-the-shelf parts, it meant others could easily put together a PC clone, if they could reverse-engineer the computing code in the ROM chip found in IBM computers. And they could. ROM chips control the various hardware components of a PC.

16) And because Microsoft Corporation held the rights to the OS, it could license the OS to the PC clone manufacturers too. This was also beneficial to the latter because rather than investing tens of thousands of dollars of their own money and many months writing their own OS (an area they had no expertise in), the PC clone manufacturers would simply install a ready OS on every machine they produced!

17) PCs and clone PCs (labelled “PC-Compatibles” by their manufacturers) all running on MS-DOS swept the entire world.

18) Each PC running on MS-DOS meant license fees for Microsoft Corporation. There are millions and millions of PCs in existence in the world, with millions more being bought every day and another huge number upgrading their old OS to the latest version. This is how Microsoft became the world’s largest software company and Bill Gates the richest man in the world.

19) Elsewhere in the world, clone PCs running pirated MS-DOS appeared on the scene. This added to the PC’s dominance in a short period of time. The pirates certainly fueled this development and Microsoft truly benefited from it many years later even as it was losing millions in revenue to the pirates then!

20) In the meantime, Apple continued with its development of its own line of computers running on its own superior OS, leading to the ground-breaking Macintosh computer.

21) Apple tried to implement a Mac cloning program to tackle the PC’s dominance in 1995 but was unsuccessful. It was already too late to make any difference, and the cloning program was cancelled in 1997.

One Down, 2 To Go. The World Ain’t Perfect.
==============

22) “WordPerfect” from WordPerfect Corporation became the dominant Word Processing Program running on PCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

23) Microsoft’s own “Word” word processing program wasn’t doing very well, as it was very buggy and lacked the powerful features WordPerfect version 5 had.

24) “Lotus 1-2-3” from Lotus Corporation was the dominant spreadsheet software in 1983.

25) Microsoft developed the Excel spreadsheet program in 1985 and by 1988, outsold Lotus 1-2-3. The electronic spreadsheet was the killer application for the PC then (word processing wasn’t) and Microsoft scored big with it. It was the only software of quality that Microsoft had ever created that captured a market on its own merits.

26) Microsoft then created the Office Suite of applications in 1993 containing a word processor (Word), spreadsheet (Excel), database (Access), and a presentation software (PowerPoint). Every PC running Windows had the MS Office Suite out of the box so everybody could become productive immediately.

27) This enabled MS Word to gain market share on WordPerfect as there’s no need for the buyer to buy a separate word processing program like WordPerfect anymore.

28) Pirated versions of Microsoft’s Office Suite ended up in clone PCs running pirated versions of Microsoft’s Windows OS all over the world.

29) This resulted in even more users of Microsoft’s products at a much quicker pace which then created a “trap” for its users that very few managed to get out of. They wouldn’t want to use any other word processing, spreadsheet, database or presentation program because it would mean re-training themselves. There was no reason to do this, and very few people were using the other competing programs anyway.

30) As a result, Microsoft’s Access became the dominant database program for the PC.

31) Microsoft’s Powerpoint became the dominant presentation program for the PC.

32) Microsoft’s Word became the dominant word processing program for the PC.

33) Microsoft’s Excel remains the dominant spreadsheet program for the PC.

Two Down, 1 To Go. Get Me On The Line.
==============

34) Netscape Navigator was the dominant browser in 1994 with millions of downloads. It had a spectacular IPO in 1995 – the first for an Internet company.

35) Netscape started charging for its browser. Big mistake.

36) Because Microsoft bundled its inferior browser, Internet Explorer with its OS for free.

37) Internet Explorer (IE) became the dominant browser within a few years, effectively killing off Netscape completely. It remains the dominant browser today despite stiff competition from Mozilla’s Firefox.

38) Because the IE browser starts by displaying the MSN web site, the MSN Search Engine is a major player in the search business, ranking at No.3 behind Google and Yahoo. This is because most users will not bother or don’t know how to change the Start Page of their Internet Explorer browsers.

39) Outlook became the dominant e-mail program because it is another component of MS Office.

40) Sun Microsystems’ software Suite called OpenOffice that is free to anybody who cares to use it is barely being noticed.

We’re All Trapped, Trapped, Trapped. But Hey…Who Cares?
==============

Today, we’ll likely have to buy the MS Office Suite separately when we buy a PC as it is no longer bundled together with the OS.

And we will gladly fork out more money for it, because we’re trapped by our need for familiarity and low tolerance for re-learning competing software that isn’t necessary for us to achieve our objectives. If you were forced to use a Mac computer, you wouldn’t know what to do to start a word processing program, or even open a window – and you’ll be begging to be given a PC to use in no time.

To be fair to Microsoft, they have used their business advantage to improve their products significantly over the years. However, there is another aspect to it – more money in newer versions. But that’s another story.

Anyway, here are the Business In Your Pajamas lessons in this post:

1. Inferior products can still be marketed and outsell superior competing products, but you can’t outsell superior products on your inferior products’ merits alone.

2. Superior products can lose out to inferior products if the latter have a Trapping Mechanism to assist it.

3. Therefore you must set up your own Trapping Mechanism even if you have a great product!

4. Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism is its OS that powers over 90% of the world’s computers, and its bundling software with its OS when necessary.

5. Trapping Mechanisms need not necessarily be hated by your customers. In fact, the reverse can be true, where your customers welcome them!

6. There are more Trapping Mechanisms around for businesses than you think! We’ll get to this in my next post when I discuss:

All Down – But Still 1 More To Go!
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Find the key to burying Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism for good as is being done by one astute business.

Yes, you can shoot holes in your competitor’s established Trapping Mechanisms with a little bit of thinking, lots of love and sunshine, and plenty of inspiration.

Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Warm Regards,
Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post using the following URL:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/microsoft/entrapment.htm