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Ideas for Mandriva Strategy?


iceyintel
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"Mandriva was far too slow to react to the netbook boom loosing out to Xandros, Linpus and Ubuntu"

 

We had two netbook OEM deals announced before Ubuntu ever came up with Netbook Remix. One is already available in France - http://www.clubic.com/article-244144-7-pet...f-netbooks.html .

 

Yes, but are the volumes involved anything by comparison to Xandros-Asus, Ubuntu-Dell, Linpus-Acer, or Suse-HP? They have global market exposure with large multi-national hardware manufacturers, not national with a little known manufacturer (at least I never heard of them, I doubt others outside France have either).

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Making deals with these nobays is not going to cut it, a company that would be the minimal size to be a big deal would be a company of the size of alienware, any smaller then that is not really that big of a deal, yes it adds up, but putting all your eggs into a nobays basket will only make mandriva sink lower in the competition.

 

No linux distro yet has a comfortable seat in the big companies besides dell and ubuntu. HP offering Suse is a finnaly, but hp taking that long to make suse come in just shows suse can still be on the hot seat if mandriva tries. But the more mandriva waits the harder.What about mandriva starts cooperating with gateway?Nobay really has them under any deal

 

Or if mandriva could pony up and advertise on newegg.com so the people who build their computers (who are usually the more advanced computer users) will see an mandriva ad and think about an alternative operating system.Or get an ad on some place that bashes windows a lot in articles, that way people thinking that "oo i should switch to a mac because windows blows" they will see the mandriva ad and think "hmmm, what is that!" I understand mandriva current funds are low, but you got to spend money to make money.And mandriva being conservative this date has got them to where they are today (not a good thing) why would being super concervative now change everything?I mean im not saying buy an ad on the superbowl but come on.

Edited by iceyintel
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I guess a saying could help here:

 

Let's think outside of the box

 

replace "the box" with "France". Stop thinking of doing your OEM deals in France. Nobody knows your manufacturers. Nobody is going to care. Pick a big name and go with it. Of course, still do your OEM deals in France for those who know and care about that particular hardware supplier.

 

What you did there was cover the French market, but you completely forgot about the rest of the world :o

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My point was only that Reiver was not correct to say that we were slow to respond to netbooks. We weren't. We ran on the Classmate (the predecessor of all modern netbooks), we work with Intel on UMPCs, we had our mainline distro running properly on netbooks way before anyone else, and we started working on OEM deals early. How, for instance, do you guys know we weren't involved in the competition for every one of those 'big manufacturer' deals? Maybe we were.

 

(I don't know. No-one tells me.)

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It would be good to find out, but also is interesting that if Mandriva were involved in the deals, why didn't they come through with it? I know Dell put up a voting thing, which then led to Ubuntu because loads of people voted for that over anything else. But that aside, most hardware will work regardless of the distro, just some odds and ends might be problematic from one distro to another.

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How, for instance, do you guys know we weren't involved in the competition for every one of those 'big manufacturer' deals? Maybe we were.

 

(I don't know. No-one tells me.)

 

That's the point Adam, it's a global market and Mandriva was not visible on the global scene in terms of OEM deals. Again this is where the company's lack of transparency lets it down, how are we to know if you are involved, it's a pretty safe bet that if we cant see it, then it didn't happen. Netbooks are pretty much in the mainstream, the key to mainstream exposure is OEM (Microsoft is a key example of how this is done), not through retail sales after the original hardware is purchased. These post-hoc installs are only of vaue to a minority of the mainstream who like to tinker, personally I believe trying to make a profitable strategy out targeting such a limited customer base will end up more hassle than it's really worth.

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That's the point Adam, it's a global market and Mandriva was not visible on the global scene in terms of OEM deals.
Obviously, they can only be on the global scene if they get those OEM deals (some of which they did - maybe not in netbooks, but there were Linux boxes running Mandriva in Wal-Mart). I think Adam's point is, you're acting as if Mandriva didn't try - when that's not the truth. They can't go running around touting that they are "working on a deal with so-and-so" when the deal hasn't been signed, sealed and delivered - it's a bad business practice. As for why they didn't get the deals, that could be anything from pricing to someones personal preference who happens to be sitting at the top (or, in the case of Dell, a loosely organized bunch of fanatics voting). Edited by tyme
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They can't go running around touting that they are "working on a deal with so-and-so" when the deal hasn't been signed, sealed and delivered - it's a bad business practice.

 

I disagree, transparency is a fundamental aspect of corporate governance, not bad practice as you put it. If Mandriva were showing that they were working hard to impress global manufacturers and trying to get their foot in the door it would boost investor confidence in the company.

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I disagree, transparency is a fundamental aspect of corporate governance, not bad practice as you put it.
Discussing details of an in-progress, unattained deal is a bad idea. Not only does it get up the hopes of your end users (thereby creating a backlash if the deal is not attained), but it can anger the company you're dealing with, automatically disqualifying you from consideration, as that company may not want the details shared - especially if others are being considered for the contract.
If Mandriva were showing that they were working hard to impress global manufacturers
There's a difference between showing that you are "working hard to impress global manufacturers" and running around telling everyone what deals you are trying to attain. Edited by tyme
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Discussing details of an in-progress, unattained deal is a bad idea. Not only does it get up the hopes of your end users (thereby creating a backlash if the deal is not attained), but it can anger the company you're dealing with, automatically disqualifying you from consideration, as that company may not want the details shared - especially if others are being considered for the contract.There's a difference between showing that you are "working hard to impress global manufacturers" and running around telling everyone what deals you are trying to attain.

 

Seriously don't know where you are going with this. I was discussing transparency (in terms of business), not a detailed analysis of operations and a breach of commercial confidentiality. Although I'm sure many directors (in general) will try to agree with you on the point of secrecy, as it means concealing their poor performance from the true owners of the company, the shareholders (increasing information asymmetry and furthering the agency problem) .

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