Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Comments:
    
    Something like 2/3rds of Commodore International's revenue comes
    from Europe, a proportion which has been increasing.  Certainly
    Commodore's Amigas and PCs are technically fine, but U.S. marketing
    has been, IMO, only adequate in a business filled with outstanding
    marketeers.  Example:  who got the one millionth Amiga?  Any other
    company would surround the event with great hoopla.
    
    Also, it's common to take several months finding the right person
    for a job at Max Toy's level.  Interesting how his successor was
    there instantly...
    
    Wes Plouff

    Maybe if I wait long enough, they'll put me in charge.
    They seem to put more effort into hiring and firing, then marketing.
             ;').         Ed
    

    lets see... Irving hired Max to help them get the Amiga into
    the business marketplace.  Max had lots of contacts, had a track
    record of even getting Service Merchandise to sell the ITT ibmpc
    clone.
    
    Guess that didn't work out.  Maybe there is more money to be made
    selling a low-cost version of the A500 in Toys'R Us.
    
    So, does anybody know what Cooperman is famous for, other than
    that he comes from Apple? 
    
    -Dave

The following press release was issued 4/24/89 by Commodore Imternational
Limited:

** Commodore Names Copperman as President of US Operations **

West Chester, PA, Monday April 24, 1989 -- Commodore International Limited
(NYSE:CBU) today announced it has named Harold D. Copperman as President
and Chief Operating Officer of Commodore's US Operations, Commodore 
Business Machines, Inc.  He replaces Max Toy, who resigned to pursue
other interests.

Mr. Copperman, 42, was formerly Vice President and General Manager, Eastern
Operations, Apple Computer, Inc. His responsibilities included overseeing
sales, marketing, support, and distribution for Apple's Eastern region.
He also managed Apple's Federal Systems Group. Prior to that, Mr. Copperman
served with International Business Machines for twenty years, most recently
as National Director of Marketing for IBM's Academic Information Systems 
Business Unit.

Irving Gould, Chairman, Commodore International Limited, said, "Our 
overseas operations have experienced strong growth in sales and profitability,
and the hiring of an individual with Harry Copperman 's experience and
track record is a key element in our plan for building a strong US operation."

Mr. Copperman said he "plans to take advantage of Commodore's broad range of
products to further penetrate the education market and to expand our use of
value-added resellers.  We will also continue to build and enhance our dealer 
distribution network." These activities, he said, are in line with Commodore's
continuing US and worldwide strategy of increasing its presence in business,
government and education while mantaining and expanding its traditional 
strength in the consumer sector."

Mr. Copperman began his career with IBM in 1967 as a System Engineeer. During
the 1970-1982 period, he worked for IBM's Data Processing Division and held
a variety of sales, marketing and management positions. In 1983, he joined
IBM's National Marketing Division, where he was named Director of Marketing
and then Regional Manager.  In 1986, he assumed national responsibility for
IBM's sales and marketing in higher education.  He joined Apple Computer in
September 1987 in his most recent position. A Graduate of Rutgers University,
Mr. Copperman hold a BS in mechanical Engineering.

------- end of quote

I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Copperman when he was with IBM
ACIS and as such was overseeing the USC Advanced Computing Support Center.
He is known for being a very "tough" guy.

Wall Street seemed to take the change pretty well. Yesterday Commodore's
stock was trading at $19 3/8, almost the highest it has been in the
recent months.

-- Marco papa 'Doc'
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    I'll check with my brother-in-law, who is a pretty high-level marketeer
    for Apple... see what he has to say about Copperman.
    
    Frankly, I thought Toy was doing a pretty good job, although folks on
    PLINK say that the A500 sales are not as good as expected in the USA.
    This makes Papa Gould angry at whoever is supposed to make A500s do
    well in the USA.
    
    Ed.
    
    

    
    In a related bit of not-so-great news, WordPerfect Corporation has
    announced that it will no longer produce new products for the Amiga. 
    They will continue to support existing software and will release one
    more upgrade soon, but no 5.0 or 6.0 will be forthcoming.  
    PlanPerfect, a semi-announced spreadsheet product, will not be
    completed.
    
    In an open letter to the Amiga Forum on Compuserve, (and re-posted on
    PLINK) one of WP Corp's VPs gave the following reasons, not necessarily
    in this order...
    
    1.  The Amiga development team was needed on other more important
        products (read: OS/2) and was dragged literally kicking and screaming
        over to help the poor MS-DOG programmers who hadn't a clue as to how a
        multitasking system works.
    
    2.  WordPerfect, in it's current incarnation, would need to be recoded
        from byte one to produce a new, totally bitmapped version, complete
        with fonts and graphic support (ie; v 6.0).  This effort would cost far
        more than they could ever hope to recoup from the relatively small
        Amiga market.  NOTE:  I don't really believe this, since ProWrite,
        a fully bitmapped WYSIWYG product, was pretty much written by James
        Bayless all by his lonesome.  It's an outstanding product.
    
    3.  The current verison of WordPerfect was actually forced upon
        management by dedicated Amiga programmers who did it as a labor of love
        as much as anything else.
    
    4.  WordPerfect Corp, as reported in the past, DID make a good bit of
        money last year from Amiga sales.  However, sales have been poor this
        year and they claimed to be losing money.  They are not selling in
        Europe (I'm not sure if this means that they don't ship the product to
        Europe or if the European marketplace just doesn't buy the product).
    
    There was quite a bit more, but you get the idea.  Does anyone think
    that this move was connected to Max Toy's exit?  Max was pretty good at
    rubbing shoulders with the right kind of crowd.
    
    As someone on PLINK said, it would be a real tragedy to see a system as
    great as the Amiga become a $1000 Nintendo.
    
    Ed
    
    

    might be due to Max leaving... but it sounds more like the OS/2
    version was running late and they knew where to find the expertise
    to get a working, multitasking, rewritten from byte one, 6.0 for
    OS/2.
    
    The big question is: once they finish the OS/2 version, will they
    port that back to the Amiga?  If so, I wonder how hard that will
    be to do (assuming their amiga programmers don't quit over this
    move to OS/2).
    
    I can understand the decrease in sales. As more graphic word processors
    become available, why buy an old version of WordPerfect?
    
    -Dave
    

    
    As much as WordPerfect is THE standard in the business world, WP Corp,
    in their official statement, claimed that the current release just
    wasn't up to snuff for a modern WYSIWYG word processor.  Excellence!
    and ProWrite are both Amiga-specific programs that make WP look rather
    old fashioned.  They were also rather embarressed at the extensive bug
    list and the long time taken to fix them.
    
    WP Corp's action hurts more for it's sublimal messages rather than the
    loss of an outstanding product. 
    
    Ed.

    The loss of sales in Europe might be due to the high price of Word
    Perfect. In the UK it is ~�250 sterling. That is a lot of money
    for a text only WP. Most other Word Processors sell for between
    �60 (Kindwords) and �120.
    
    Martin
    

Re: .7

>... but it sounds more like the OS/2 version was running late and they
>knew where to find the expertise to get a working, multitasking,
>rewritten from byte one, 6.0 for OS/2.

This turn of events (putting the Amiga programmers to work on the OS/2
project) explains a rumor printed up in InfoWorld.  A few months back,
InfoWorld printed that the OS/2 version of WordPerfect was being developed
on Amigas, which in the opinion of the developers provided a better
development environment.

If the situation really that the OS/2 project was running late, and
that WP Corp decided to put the Amiga programmers on the project, I
could see the Amiga diehards refusing to give up their development
environment.  I suspect that the demise of support for the Amiga
has been brewing for a long time at WP.  As the OS/2 project runs
later, the temptation to shut down Amiga support and development
grows stronger.  After all, what profit a corporation to gain the
Amiga market if it loses the clone market?

    
    Got a little info about Copperman...
    
    Actually, I got it from my sister, who works at Appel in Cupertino with
    her husband, who used to work for .... Copperman!
    
    My sister couldn't say much, but the words 'jerk' and 'slavedriver'
    came up a few times.
    
    Don't quite know what to make of that.
    
    Ed.

    re:.11
    
    Maybe Irving Gould misses having Jack Tramiel working for him. 
    I've seen similar terms describing Jack from ex-Atari employees.
    
    -Dave

    More about WP:
    in an interwiew in the biggest german Amy-Mag a marketing-mgr of
    the german organization of WP "threatend" not to develop a newer
    version of WordPerfect, if there are a lot of illegal copies circling
    around (in the future). He spoke about (500 !) sold copies of WP for
    the Amiga in Germany [Installed base in GY: 30000 A2000 / more than
    250000 A500] 

    Ralf
    ====