Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Fwd: Libre Office's future strategy - suggestions from a Computer Weekly article that may be of use to the Foundation

On Oct 29, 2010, at 9:53 AM, Frank Esposito wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Monfort Florian
> <florian.monfort@gmail.com>wrote:
> > Le vendredi 29 octobre 2010 à 09:29 -0400, James Walker a écrit :
> > > Maybe something that we should think about is creating a Document
> > Foundation
> > > family of products.
> > >
> > > I would not really put more products into the main LibreOffice software,
> > but
> > > find and/or create additional products that enhance the usability of LO.
> > > One thing we really need to think about is an email/calender product. and
> > > some kind of project management product that easily intergrates with LO,
> > > even if those products are ones that are out there already they need to
> > be
> > > easily intergrated into LO.  Are there any that have kind of staled that
> > we
> > > could approach the community to help them out and bring them under the
> > > foundation to help them grow.
> > >
> > > Of course the easy thing to do would be a partnership with Mozilla,  and
> > use
> > > Thunderbird, and Lightening.
> > >
> > > I have always felt that the project has been missing email, calender and
> > > contact management software.
> > >
> > > James
>
> These great idea. I would also add because I think the market is still wide
> open is the cloud office suite (think google docs). We could develop a
> server based online office suite that is fully compatible with ODF. this
> would be great for education and "virtual offices."
>
> Another path would be mobile phones, this are is wide open for FOSS.
> Android, iPhone and blackberry ports of LO.

I think we need to look ahead to tablets, based on iOS and Android. According to recent news 
articles, sales of iPads have made Apple the number one computer vendor in the USA. Thinking 
strategically, it looks like the developing world may skip PCs entirely and adopt tablets as their 
standard computing platform going forward, just like they skipped landlines in favor of mobile 
phones. Microsoft Windows will have an enormous challenge to gain any foothold in this market, and 
MS Office too. Thus, we have an opportunity to start on a level playing field here, without the 
huge inertia MS has long enjoyed. On a fair playing field, we will win--no question.

My strategic suggestion is that we build a "LibreOffice Touch" for Android and iOS tablets as the 
first new member of this broader family of products. Full ODF support will allow compatibility with 
LibreOffice, and consistent branding will help reinforce both product lines.

(As for web office suites, I researched this recently. Zimbra provides open source web-based docs 
and spreadsheets that customers can install on their own servers, first launched in 2006: 
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/web2explorer/zimbra-launches-zimbra-documents/259  If we want to work in 
this area, collaborating with Zimbra could give us a jump start.)

-Ben

Benjamin Horst
bhorst@mac.com
646-464-2314 (Eastern)
www.solidoffice.com


--
E-mail to marketing+help@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to unsubscribe
List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/marketing/
All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted