Lotus Development Corp is reported to be seriously concerned about Microsoft Corp’s new Excel 3.0 for Windows, which was launched earlier this week (CI No 1,586): Lotus has been caught out by the popularity of Windows and many believe this prompted the acquisition of Samna Corp late last year (CI No 1,546), since Samna had been quick off the mark in launching its word-processing package Ami for the Windows environment; at Excel’s launch Microsoft’s Bill Gates made it clear that he wants to dislodge Lotus from it dominance of the spreadsheet market and is quoted as saying, as soon as Windows is dominant, there aren’t going to be two of us in the leadership position.
