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Corel has landed a deal with German OEM software distributor Markement to bundle its WordPerfect Office X3 desktop productivity software into Markements PCSuite 2006.
The deal sees WordPerfect Office X3 replace StarOffice in PCSuite. The PCSuite 2005 Standard Edition included StarOffice 7, CorelDraw Essentials 2 and Marco Polo EuroRoute 2005 mapping software, while the Professional Edition also included Symantecs Norton Internet Security 2005.
Markement, based in Stuttgart, Germany, used to sell StarOffice as part of the popular PCSuite office bundle and as a stand-alone program.
In March 2004, Sun Microsystems announced that Markement has sold more than a million copies of StarOffice.
“We are very pleased about the deal with Markement, which recognizes that our product offered good value from a pricing perspective as well as a high level of quality and feature-richness, as well as compatibility with Microsoft offices file formats.
“This is a far richer offering than what was offered previously, and that was a driver for the deal,” said Richard Carriere, general manager of Office Productivity for Corel, in Ottawa.
Stephan Keck, Markements managing director, said that while Markements customers in the OEM market wanted alternatives to Microsoft products, they also wanted technology that was well-known and had good brand recognition and reliable technical support.
“We felt that Corel WordPerfect Office X3 met all those requirements. We look for suppliers who have a strong understanding of the markets we serve and who are committed to investing in the product offerings,” he said in a statement.
Mayank Choudhary, the group manager of Suns collaboration product group in Santa Clara, Calif., told eWEEK that Sun had chosen not to renew the Markement contract with StarOffice 8, which was released last September, although Markement could still distribute StarOffice 7.
“Starting with StarOffice 8, Sun shifted to a new approach to penetrate the consumer market with software publishers and in Europe, we partnered with Avanquest Software. Sun now works directly with OEMs, enabling us to involve our publishers in reaching consumers,” Choudhary said.
This latest deal follows hot on the heels of the one between Corel and Lenovo to ship the Corel Small Business Center on Lenovo 3000 laptops and desktops throughout North America, Latin America, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.
The Corel Small Business Center is a suite of office productivity software that includes Corel WordPerfect Office, Corel Photo Album 6 Starter Edition, Corel Paint Shop Pro X and CorelDraw Graphics Suite.
Editors Note: This story was updated to include comments from Markement.