Newspapers in the UK are agog over the idea that the successful local grocery store chain, Tesco, is to launch a range of office software. Will they, ask the breathless hacks, be able to take on the might of Microsoft? Well, lets think. Microsoft has a strangehold on business computing, and few IT departments are likely to send their staff popping out the grocery store for new software. Also Microsoft is a global brand whereas Tesco products are available only where there are Tesco stores.

On the other hand, Tesco isn’t aiming at the business market, and its offering does have some useful characteristics. The idea is that the software should do pretty much all of the basic things office software needs to do, but have none of the feature bloat that Microsoft has added to its product over the years as an excuse to persuade people to upgrade. Also the Tesco product will cost around $40, whereas Microsoft charges at least an order of magnitude more. Then again, Microsoft has recently announced that it will be making cut-down versions of its Office suite available for free as online services.

The more I think about this, the more I think the Tesco product is doomed, but I did appreciate this article from a leading technology newspaper, if only for the honesty of one of they analysts they talked to.

David Mitchell, analyst at Ovum said that marketing and not price, quality or ease of use is the key reason why some software products gain dominance over others.

Yep, that’s the software market in a nutshell. And don’t we programmers know it.