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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates
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To: sand wedge who wrote (38205)1/21/2001 12:26:24 AM
From: DownSouth  Read Replies (2) of 54805
 
I always thought it was interesting that Wang chose to sell off the successful software division to Kodak. They had a competitive product but couldn't position it successfully in the marketplace.

The problems Wang had with its imaging software (which was all that was left to sell to Kodak:

1. Proprietary image format (WIF) prevented them from capturing the market.
2. No significant applications--just an API toolkit.
3. Their workflow software was too structured, not supporting ad hoc workflow.
4. They could not figure out how to make a profit, the R&D and sales costs were so high.
5. They needed the cash from the sale to Kodak and needed to stop the cash outflow.

In the latter years, Wang concentrated mostly on lawsuits. They had a team of lawyers who sued anything that moved.

I can't fault them for that. They were protecting the software licenses for the minicomputer line. The software license did NOT transfer ownership on sale of the hardware, and it was being sold on the re-sale market like crazy. So they were enforcing their license rights. They also sued for protection of their "Stacked Integrated Memory Module" (SIMM) patent. Dr. Wang invented the SIMMs chip and all the memory manufacturers were using the design without paying royalties. Can't blame them for that.
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