"Bill's gate is really unusual!" After hearing Microsoft's high-profile release of Multiplan spreadsheet software, he couldn't help but sigh, "I really don't miss a little opportunity, and the king of the market deserves it." ”

Zhang Yi was blaming herself for coming too late, and she was a little confused when she heard the long exclamation: "Who is Bill's Gate?

"President of Microsoft, Gates. Laugh for a long time, this is his generation's contemptuous name for the richest man, usually a manifestation of helplessness, but now it has a different meaning, "Immediately stop arguing with IBM, release our products, be high-profile, don't hide it." ”

Zhang Yi hurriedly took out a pen and began to record, although she is also a senior manager, but she still admires the long-term vision. Since she has been working with Changjiu, as long as she is in terms of technology, no matter what she says for a long time, she can do her own thing in terms of the market, but the technical side of things must definitely be based on long-term opinions.

"Well, I think Microsoft is a small company, but its products are very threatening, and we need to raise Microsoft's level to B. Zhang Yi said that the competitor classification was unanimously decided by them, in order to distinguish the companies in the market.

"There's nothing to be nervous about, Multiplan is no match for us. "Long and stable, although he doesn't know what Multiplan looks like, but the history of Multiplan has been determined, it is a failed product, since the competition is not Lotus-1-2-3, then it is not his opponent," Our VS-office series of software can be shipped, and it is very important to promote it in advance, and all advertisements must be done, whether it is the Wall Street Journal or whatever, as long as it is on the top of the media, we must advertise our products, and I want to see our product advertisements everywhere I can see. ”

Zhang Yi sweated for a moment: "This has to cost a lot of money, isn't it too ...... It's a bit messy, and we should be able to just advertise in those major media. ”

Long glare: "Afraid of spending money, even if you spend, no matter how much advertising is too little, you go to draw up a budget, no, I don't look at the budget, you go directly to contact, how much money is spent on the company." "I don't know for a long time, advertising is still willing to invest, and none of the popular products in history is not high advertising investment, even if the product is garbage.

Zhang Yi originally wanted to save some money for the company, but with a long-term license, he didn't have any scruples, and simply planned for a week, and released the vs-office system at the Computer Manufacturers Expo Computer Manufacturers Expo COMDEX (COMputerDealersEXposition) in Las Vegas in October of 82.

The Comdex conference was a global feast for electronics, and of course this was the way it came to be. COMDEX '82 was just a small gathering of less than 10,000 people, similar to the Beijing Fair in China, and then COMEX got bigger and bigger until it was sold to a stupid Japanese company B for $800 million, which is the best opportunity if you have any computer hardware or software to look for.

Microsoft, which released Multiplan a month earlier, took it very seriously, because it was a great opportunity to order, and Bill would not let go of it. As the person in charge of Microsoft's booth at this conference, Ballmer was busy with all fours, and Microsoft also had money and energy to build, and the booth alone was the largest, second only to VidiCorp (a software company run by Walker, which specializes in selling videoform), and could accommodate more than 200 people, which is not spectacular.

Microsoft has a lot of money, and Zhang Yi is not good at stubble, although the booth is not the largest, but because IBM did not come to participate, it made a booth of more than 100 people, and temporarily recruited more than a dozen beauties to distribute advertisements, which can be regarded as ingenious and attracted many men to visit.

On the ornate floor of the gambling capital, Gates made a big splash, and his impassioned speeches, promises, and braggings really won the hearts of many people, and his propaganda for Multiplan was almost shameless, and even Simeone felt sweaty next to him.

But the effect was very good, and the audience below was fascinated by Gates's speech, and the people at that time were honest, and when they heard how many promises Bill Gate had made, they were immediately convinced, and they didn't care about what kind of sacredness Microsoft was.

Promises were a sacred thing at that time, far less worthless than they are now. If a company that mixes in the market does not pay attention to its promises, the only thing that awaits it is to disappear, except for the monopoly company, of course.

There's a little bit of this blind worship of commitment that comes from Intel, and here's a story.

After Intel released the 8080 that year, the market response was very good, and the Z80 processor became the de facto standard in the market. But major companies are eyeing up and are holding back their efforts to develop 16-bit processors, wanting to snatch this big cake in one fell swoop.

Naturally, Intel couldn't sit still, and in 1978 it introduced the 8086 processor with a 16-bit architecture, followed by the lower-priced 8088 processor the following year.

In Intel's plan, the cheap and efficient 8088 should be red and purple, where did I think that this thing could not be sold, which embarrassed Intel's senior management. The reason for this is that the new products of Zilog, Motorola, National Semiconductor and other companies are on the market earlier.

Time cannot be reversed, Intel can only break the game, technically irretrievable, and can only be tackled through marketing.

The game-changer was named House, then director of marketing for microprocessors, and he created the application engineer system, which continues to this day by placing engineers in various distribution offices to support customers.

The product is not easy to sell, and the senior management is also nerve-wracking, so they convened the company's marketing backbone, held meetings day after day, and kept using brainstorming methods to stimulate creativity, trying to find a way to break the game.

After consuming countless cigarettes, coffee, and brain cells, the gang came up with a bad idea, which was the "Victory" plan, led by House, with the aim of reclaiming the 16-place market that was about to be lost.

The key word of the winning plan is commitment, and according to House, all companies' decisions about which processors to adopt are deliberate, long-term and not easily changed once chosen.

This was also in line with the operating conditions of the microcomputer company at the time, so in 1980 House targeted 2,000 customers, and his reason was simple: "If customers start buying Intel development machines and use them to develop products equipped with microprocessors, then when they launch their products, they will buy Intel microprocessors in large quantities." ”

Based on this assumption, House began to take his marketing team around bragging about B, making countless promises, fooling countless company executives, boasting about Intel's steps to let them know which chips Intel would continue to supply to ensure that customers' investments would not be wasted.

House also briefed the engineers on Intel's chip development plan, what auxiliary chips will be available, and how much software will be backing it.

Anyway, House is a big mouth, like those salesmen who don't go into the stream, and takes all the customer's requests as they are: "Leave it to us, we can meet any request!"

It's just that behind House is the famous Intel, so people are fooled by its abundant development materials, and their confidence in Intel has greatly increased.

However, House also invested in it, in addition to the listed 8086 and 8088, other 80186 information, the news of 80286 that has not yet been listed, and even the secret development of the 32-bit architecture has been thrown out.

This is a big gamble, prematurely expose their future products, easy to be targeted by competitors, but there must be gains, Intel is still very concerned about the commitment, they categorically stated, Intel will inevitably launch products according to this step, and realize their promises with practical actions.

The response to the Winning Plan has never been more overwhelming, customers have never seen such a hard commitment, and no other company has been able to provide such a clear blueprint for future growth.

Until today, this marketing model has become a natural move for microprocessor companies, and it would be unusual not to do so.

Bill's door is deep in the three of them, but he goes further, he dares to talk nonsense without actual things, he doesn't take his promise seriously at all, anyway, he is the only one who supplies if he crushes the competitors, and you can't buy it if you want to buy it when the time comes.

Therefore, at the COMDEX conference in 82, Microsoft made more than $30 million in just a few days of comdex under Bill's big speech.

Compared with Microsoft, Zhang Yi's viewsoft company is a bit slow to heat, the first slow pace, although the advertising is overwhelming, but it also takes time to verify, and the things released after are naturally not very eye-catching.

Although the sales performance is good, reaching nearly 20 million US dollars, it is far from Zhang Yi's imagination.

But the layman watched the excitement, the insider watched the doorway, the marketing was checked by Gates, and Simeone walked around the venue to see what could attract him.

There are not many software vendors that can compete with Microsoft, and the biggest threat is naturally VidiCorp, a spreadsheet predator, followed by MicroPro wordstar (old guys may remember, the word star, the first time Chinese writers change pens use it).

Simeone stopped in front of the VidiCorp booth for a long time and sneered, because VidiCorp didn't have any new products at all, and the new PC version of the videoform was simply the new packaging of the old product, and the poor performance was okay, so there was nothing to worry about.

However, MicroPro's wordword processing software is very threatening, and Simeone compared similar products that Microsoft is developing, and thinks it is half a pound, but wordsstar entered the market very early, selling millions of units, and now it has become the de facto standard.

It's a notable opponent, Simeone nodded secretly, and it seems that Microsoft's product needs more improvements, or it will be inferior to WordStar.

Having defined a potential opponent in his mind, Simeone knew what to expect, so he naturally moved on to the Viewsoft booth.

Microsoft's first target of hatred is Viewsoft, because it has snatched the share of Microsoft's operating system, and its main product has made Bill's door feel insurmountable.

There was also a crowd of people in front of the Viewsoft booth, which disgusted Simone, who was a man who liked to be clean. However, he still has a high interest in observing competitors, especially the continuous cheers of the crowd, which is even more itchy.

Could it be that the mysterious company of Viewsoft has released something new?, Simeone thought to himself, and couldn't help but squeeze in.

A beautiful young lady handed Simone an advertisement and smiled at him.

"Thank you!" said Simone politely, considering himself a gentleman.

Just glanced at the content of the advertisement, and couldn't help but change color on my face.

Spreadsheet! Spreadsheet again! Simeone's heart unconsciously felt lifted.

Microsoft has had an application software plan for a long time, but no one has implemented it, and the first target was videoform, and I also asked Dr. Yu, the author of videoform.

It was only later that Dr. Yu founded viewsoft and sold videoform, and Bill Gate focused all his attention on Walker's VidiCorp.

Unexpectedly, time has passed, ViewSoft actually launched a new generation of spreadsheet software, and Simeone immediately began to pay attention to the explanation of ViewSoft personnel, trying to understand the true face of the new software.

Viewsoft's flagship product this time is the VS-Office series of software, which took nearly a year to develop when he was in Hong Kong with a few right-hand men.

For a long time, spreadsheet software was a proprietary product of VidiCorp, developed by Mitch Kapoor. Kapoor was also a wonderful man, who was impoverished in his early years, believed in occultism, and worshipped the Lotus as his guru (his experience was similar to that of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who believed in the communist commune and went to India to seek Eastern religions, where he almost died).

Originally, Kapoor wrote VisiCalc, sold it to Walker, got $1.7 million, and developed the louts1-2-3 (Lotus 123) software, which integrated spreadsheets, databases, and business drawings, and became a nightmare for Microsoft on comdex.

It's just that after a long time in this era, the unfortunate Kapoor was strangled in the cradle, and he didn't even have a chance to come out (the software was already in Walker's hands), and naturally there was no Lotus Company.

VS-Office is a long-term office software integration product, which includes a spreadsheet, a word processing program, a database and a commercial drawing software, full of plagiarism.

Of course, plagiarism is creativity, launch is timing, and contains strength, which was written by the long-term leadership of the software team in a year.

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The cold has improved a lot, and one nose is actually ventilated......