Final Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Use Steps: Use steps include all the customer's value added activities or the consumption of the product itself. These steps include all the costs the customer incurs in employing the product in its intended use.

C.
Experience: Enhance the experience the customer has with the product

3. Increase the customer's sense of security with the product

C. Your investment is safe

Adopt common performance standard

No.	SIC	Year	Note
1	0	2001	Compaq's iPaq Pocket PC has become a huge success, stealing market share from rival Palm. The learning curve for this product is cut by using Microsoft applications. This improves compatibility and eases users into operations, as they are using products they are already familiar with. In addition, the iPaq recognizes handwriting and features a voice recorder, while Palm requires a special script.
2	3571	1996	Apple plans to cross-license technologies with other Internet leaders to create an open standard for Internet media, which will bring to customers broader choices, easier access, & richer content.
3	3571	1988	Name-brand IBM compatibles, such as Compaq or Tandy usually have designs that differ somewhat from IBM's products. Clones, though, are exactly the same size and shape, and most parts are interchangeable w/ those of IBM computers.
4	3571	2000	Many schools and universities are phasing out their Macs in favor of personal computers based on the rival Windows operating system. Schools wish to prepare students for the workplace, and most companies and the private sector now use Windows, not Macs.
5	3571	2002	Palm will offer more services for use with secure corporate networks. With its Wireless Data Access Server product, Palm will be able to securely extend core applications to mobile workers.
6	3571	2002	Thin client technology started in the mid 1990s with Oracle and Sun offering thin client solutions. But those machines ran on Java and required rewriting customer applications software. Neoware systems in contrast will run with any application.
7	3571	2003	Palm hopes to give shoppers a reason to buy more handhelds. The Palm Zire 71 is a multimedia device with a built-in camera, a high-resolution color screen and the ability to watch video clips and listen to MP3 music files. It sells for $299.
8	3572	2000	In 1995 EMC Corp.'s chief executive was the first to build a storage box that could work with different kinds of servers from mainframes to Unix workstations. The company was also among the first to realize the disks could drive sales of sophisticated software with higher profit margins for managing the big filing systems.
9	3572	2001	Dell says its new products will open new opportunities. The company has reconfigured its current line of storage products with new software that allows them to attach to computer servers made by Compaq Computer Corp., IBM Corp., and Hewlett Packard Co. Dell's storage units initially had been designed for its own line of servers.
10	3572	2002	In the difficult data storage market, customers are now demanding that different brands of servers share arrays of drives, giving them more flexibility.
11	3599	2004	The Semiconductor Test Consortium is forging ahead and releasing a the first version of a standard it calls Openstar, despite a lack of commitment from chip test gear makers. STC certified its first test gear maker, Advantest, on the Openstar standard.
12	7372	1995	Microsoft puts more resources into keeping new versions of Windows compatible with previous ones. (The new competition has no such baggage.)
13	7372	1989	One of Oracle's key early decisions was picking a technology called SQL that was later endorsed in IBM products. Another was designing its software to be portable – able to run on nearly any vendor's hardware.
14	7372	2001	Borland Software claims that "we as a corporation are consistently focused on the developer community, and we are focused on giving them the freedom of choice to use any products they want with our products. They don't have to exclusively use ours."
15	7372	2002	In a role reversal for Microsoft, Sony has been able to stave off the software giant's challenge in the video-gaming industry because the Sony PlayStation 2 boasts a much larger library of games than the technologically more advanced Microsoft Xbox does.

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