Corel establishes European offices

Software vendor Corel has abandoned its attempt to run its European operations entirely from Canada.

It is setting up offices in the UK, France, Germany and The Netherlands only a year after closing all the European Wordperfect subsidiaries.

Corel?s Canada-centric stance is likely to have contributed to recent poor results in Europe. A Corel source said: ?We probably didn?t take a sufficiently European view.?

Users outside the UK have been angered by the delay in releasing non-English versions of Corel products. Office Professional 7, which shipped in May, is not yet available in French or Dutch.

?We have to look at where market share is,? the Corel source said.

But the company is unlikely to repeat its success in the US, where it has supplanted Microsoft Office as retail market leader, if it fails to take European users seriously.

Michael Cowpland, head of Corel, admitted that the company had also seriously misjudged the corporate market in Europe.