German StarOffice Does Boffo Business in Germany

The sales of Sun Microsystems Inc.’s StarOffice productivity suite are a shadow of Microsoft Office’s. Still, prospects looked brighter Thursday as Sun announced that German OEM software distributor Markement GmbH has sold more than a million copies of StarOffice.

Markement, based in Stuttgart, Germany, sells StarOffice both as a standalone program and as part of its popular PCSuite office bundle. This German productivity package also includes CorelDraw Essentials, Norton Anti-Virus 2004 and Marco Polo TravelRouting Europe 2004, a European travel-planning program.

While StarOffice runs on many operating systems, Markement sells the Windows version.

The German software vendor sets up PCSuite 2004 as a direct rival to Microsoft Works Suite 2004. This German office suite from Microsoft has no direct equivalent in the U.S. market. It includes Word 2002, the spreadsheet offering from Microsoft Works 7, Picture It Premium 2002, Autoroute 2004 and Encarta 2004.

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