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| Authored by: foulis on Saturday, July 14 2012 @ 06:14 AM EDT |
<p
align=right><b>PLAINTIFF'S<br>EXHIBIT<br><u>1672</
u></b><br>Comes v. Microsoft</p>
<b><u>DOJ – Legal</u></b></p>
From: Pete Higgins<br>
To: bill gates<br>
Cc: mike maples<br>
Subject: RE: Marketing Word, Excel and Office<br>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1993 10:45AM</p>
I am going to schedule some time with you in a couple of weeks to review the
Year of the Office marketing plan and to discuss these marketing issues overall.
We can also do a review of the PC Expo stuff we're preparing for you while
there's still some time to work on it. I'll bring Hank along.</p>
Referring to your mail below, there are cases where there's disagreement, cases
where you're right, and cases where I think there's an information
lag.</p>
---------<br>
<br>
From: Bill Gates<br>
To: Mike Maples; Pete Higgins<br>
Cc: Chris Peters; Hank Vigil; Lewis Levin; Steve Ballmer<br>
Subject: Marketing Word, Excel and Office<br>
Date: Friday, April 30, 1993 1:03PM</p>
I am really wonder if we can get the marketing groups to be empowered to do
important stuff. I am sure they are doing good things I don't know about but its
certainly not enough and its not allowing us to avoid commodization.</p>
As far as I can tell:</p>
- they don't do anything to try and disuade[sic] OEMs from bundling like any
survey data (when I ask for something like this I wait 9 months with no message
of any kind and then find out nothing is going to be done. I ask for very little
and I wish they would send me some mail when they decide I am not to get it.) I
set a goal of having data to discourage oems from bundling.</p>
(MikeMap sent you a summary of what has happened with this. Arguably it's a
little hard to do a study the OEM won't help you with. However, we're
re-starting with new names we're getting from OEMs).</p>
-they don't do anything that makes them feel raising price is a mistake. They
must have been involved in the plan to deal with competition by raising
price.<br>
-they don't understand the financial situation of our competitors and drive
strategy around that.<br>
-they don't talk about our features in a clever way. Heard any good terms
lately? I haven't and I don't know of any for the new versions.
Unacceptable.<br>
-they don't talk about our approaches of getting customer input in a clever way.
Ever seen a slide talking about the number of calls we take and how we use
those?<br>
-they don't try to come up with using our support as a competitive
advantage.<br>
-they don't write slides for anyone to use for anything. I want to sell our
applications but there is no one thinking about it. If there were there would be
a message. Once there is a message I will type the slide myself.<br>
-they take ideas like saying we lead the way with Windows commitment and are
staying ahead and decide that its not a good message. Instead they say you will
get a 15% raise if you use software or something like that. Whenever I want to
rub in our commitments to Windows I am told “don't do it”. Maybe because they
like to spend money on business press the idea of being ahead is too
complex.<br>
-they don't come up with features that are heavily marketable. When is the last
time you saw a memo from them on winning features.<br>
-they don't use EBCs as an opportunity to sell customers.<br>
-they don't come up with plans to win in segments like education. When did you
ever see a plan on how we do in a segment and how to win?<br>
-they don't suggest using an affinity with systems to do aggressive things like
demo disks or applets.<br>
-they don't write up cases where we lose and analyze how to do it better but
they do take random wins and send them around without enough data to do anything
about it. I actually do realize there are customers who buy from us and
receiving a few random wins without information is as stupid as any mail I ever
get.<br>
-they don't get lots of visible customer endorsements (apparently they feel it
is hard – like the mail I sent about excel and accounting firms)</p>
<center>Page 54</center>
<p align=right>FL AG
0080362<br>CONFIDENTIAL<br><br><b>MX
7157446<br>CONFIDENTIAL</b></p>
<p align=right> HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL</p>
<hr>
<br>
-they don't get involved in the systems work on Windows APIs on UNIX to prove
platform independence. They allow competition op paint us as not believing in
multiple platforms.<br>
-they don't believe in leaking features in a way to build excitement or else you
would already be reading about it and I would be allowed to even show something
to give a glimpse. We only missed 10 chances for this this week alone (I was in
Europe).<br>
-they don't seem to know what kinds of customers we do good or bad
with.<br>
<br>
Fundamentally they don't get up and come up with hard core ways for us to get
over 60% share.<br>
<br>
Because of the lack of the above price is becoming our only way to drive
share.</p>
<center>Page 55</center>
<p align=right>FL AG
0080363<br>CONFIDENTIAL<br><br><b>MX
7157447<br>CONFIDENTIAL</b></p>
<p align=right> HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL</p>[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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