We’re #1! Rah rah rah!

June 30 2003

Content is slowly making its way to lotus.com on this.... IDC released its new Integrated Collaborative Environment market share report over the weekend. See my lotus.com blog for an initial impression, and this story in CRN.

Lotus remained on top in terms of revenue for 2002, according to IDC.
According to the research firm's recently released numbers for 2002, for example, Lotus continued its leads in revenue, claiming roughly 46.2 percent of all revenue for the integrated collaborative environment (ICE) market in 2002.
Best part of the IDC report -- the seats war is over.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL (still on the deck) Category: Add/View Comments [7]

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  1. 1  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/1/2003 2:37:28 PM

    CRN cites Ferris Research seats numbers -- not IDC numbers. I honestly have -NO IDEA- where these numbers came from...I've never seen them before. I know a couple of Ferris analysts read my blog, maybe they can explain it. They sound like it might have been for some other market . You are correct -- at MS's last quarterly financial report, they only claimed 115 million seats of Exchange.

  1. 2  Eduard P.  | 7/1/2003 2:37:28 PM

    "...However, its overall share dropped from a high of 48.4 percent in 2001, while Microsoft's share of e-mail revenue in 2002 inched up to 44.3 percent, to $725 million, from roughtly 38 percent in 2001. "

    This is what many Lotus partners are worried about. It's going to be like 123, Os/2 or Netscape old histories? IBM should be strong enough for turning out the way the things are going... Sample:

    Provide very cheap(or free)/easy soft/service/technology to ENDUser/HomeUser (something like IM) that may be applied and grow with more products later on enterprises. It seems this way is how Netscape/Mozilla may get back people confidence...

    IBM must open his target market not only to small companies but also to end/home/teen users.

  1. 3  Eduard P.  | 7/1/2003 2:37:28 PM

    Hi again Ed,

    Many of the comments on the forums about Notes/Domino way are based on final customers confidence on the strategy applied to the Lotus brand by IBM.

    I'm not the proper one to give advice on what business model should IBM follow. But what most people sees is that Ms is in almost every consumer computer (Linux aside). And this people are also the ones who is going to decide what is going to be on their business computers.

    I believe that AOL is mainly identified as an ISP and not a software manufacturer so here you may have an explanation why iPlanet didn't got success. But also believes that market targets are being everyday more the same for IBM & Ms. Ms has been going from down(consumer) to up(enterprises). Is IBM going from up to down?. Why not?

    I'm quite interested on models samples discussion. I would like to know if you may provide them here or on a recent related web/forum link. Why not here?. The three ones I mentioned before are good ones to discuss: Lotus 123, Netscape & OS/2. And a 4th one: Ms are going to loose market share with their present new end-user licence policies.

  1. 4  Ed Brill  | 7/1/2003 2:37:28 PM

    Ah here we go...

    1) Growth. It's interesting that IDC had previously predicted that 2001 was the peak of this market and would then go into decline. The only anomaly in 2002 is that many Microsoft customers enrolled in Licensing 6.0, and were required to buy new licenses or maintenance in order to get on the new contract vehicle. Nobody else in this market grew. I'll be interested to see next year's report.

    2) Consumer market -- could be a whole separate blog topic. Success in the business market does not require expansion into the consumer market. I have a hundred case studies and examples for why this is not the right formula. Let's look at it in reverse -- why was AOL a failure with their iPLanet offerings (sold it all back to Sun)? Their success in consumer e-mail (they have millions of users, right?) had nothing to do with how to succeed in business. They are very very very different models.

  1. 5  Mike Brown  | 7/1/2003 2:37:28 PM

    But they DID report the seat count too, Ed!

    "According to Ferris Research, Microsoft leads the e-mail market in terms of head count, with nearly 338 million seats, while Lotus trails in second place with about 283 million Notes users."

    Any comment on these numbers, Ed? Other than "it's revenue that counts", of course!

    They're by far that largest I've ever seen, for both companies. That last figures I saw, quite recently or so I thought, had MS around the 100K mark, with Lotus at about 90K. Now though numbers have tripled, all of a sudden?

    Kind of re-inforces your point about the meaninglessness of the seat cound metric.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 6  Keith www.yellerdog.net | 7/3/2003 3:28:22 PM

    Ed, how about a link to the IDC report?

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/3/2003 3:38:11 PM

    If you are an IDC customer, you can get there on their site. We don't own rights to it for redistribution.