Re: Linux Market share?

From: AT (notme_at_example.com)
Date: 07/18/05 

Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:41:59 +0200

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:01:15 +0200, Patrick Grimbergen wrote:

> Arthur Hagen wrote:
>>>O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile are fairly ubiquitous now, Orange (Hutchinson)
>>>as well, but they don't seem to cover as many countries.
>
> O2 -> UK company, not present on the dutch market
> Vodafone -> UK company, present on the Dutch market after a takeover,
> used to be called Libertel (dutch) here
> T-Mobile -> German company, present on the dutch market after taking
> over BEN Telecomunications (dutch)
> Orange -> French company, present on the Dutch market, but it is
> practically broke.
> Telfort -> Dutch mobile operator, you don't see it anyware else
> KPN -> Dutch mobile operator, recently bought Telfort, used to be the
> biggest network, and is now even bigger. It used to have a branche in
> Germany called Mannesmann Telecom, don't know if they still got it.

Mannesmann was bought by Vodafone and operated the D2 network in Germany,
while KPN was (is?) part of the E-Plus network. KPN once bid for Orange,
but I can't remember whether it was successful.

>> Some European brand names I can think of that are truly ubiquitous and
>> you can expect finding in any town in all of Europe are beers like
>> Heineken and Guinness, inferior liquours like Johnnie Walker[1] and
>> Beefeater[1], cars like Mercedes and Volvo, watches like Omega, Tissot
>> and Rolex, HP sauce[2] and good old Philips[3].
>
> Heineken -> Dutch brand, clearly identifiable as "dutch" in europe,
> although I know it is not that way in the rest of the world.

One of the largest drinks company in the world. The Heineken brand beer
tastes like piss. :-)

> Guiness -> Owned by Heineken... never really was a Irish brand, the
> dutch kind of invented it...

Nope, Diageo

> Johnnie Walker -> believe it or not... again Heineken has a hand in
> this... but I don't think they actually own it.

again, Diageo, but I have to admit that I don't know anything about
Diageo's shareholder structure and it may very well be connected to
Heineken after all.

> Volvo -> Scandinavian company (but I think it is Ford now) has the
> safest cars around, both for the one inside the car and the person
> outside it. You see a lot of them here, but they are not really
> eyecatching, so you seem to forget about them.

They also seem to have quality and image problems since Ford took them
over.

> Tissot and Rolex -> probably swiss... they make watches for ages, it's
> part of their culture, just like the knives.

Tissot belongs to Swatch among many others (eg. Rado, Glashuette,
Longines, Omega etc.) and yes, it's Swiss. Rolex is Swiss but I don't know
who owns it.

> HP -> know it from England, but have not seen it anywhere else.
> Phillips -> Again dutch. The company bought Whirlpool, an american
> company some wile ago and decided against rebranding it. However you
> will probably find Phillips Profecional all over the states, especial in
> medical equipement. Whirlpool products are sold in the EU as well, just
> not all of them and they are quite expensive.
>
>> They're still no match for huge American brand names like Coca-Cola,
>> Ford and McDonalds.
>
> Not entirely true, just think about SHELL (UK/Dutch), UNILEVER
> (UK/Dutch), AHOLD (Dutch), SIEMENS (German), ING BANK (Dutch), RABOBANK
> (Dutch). These companies are all over the globe... altough I must say
> that they are not "European" companies, since most of them do not sell
> in all european countries.
>
> For instance, AHOLD you can find in NL, ES, UK, USA, Argentinia, Brazil,
> some asian countries and probably more, but fact is that they are only
> active in 3 or 4 EU countries.

In todays world it doesn't make that much sense anymore to view companies
as national or European IMHO (is Daimler-Chrysler German, European or
American or all of the above?), while brands are often retained in certain
markets because consumers are familiar with them or relate better to them
(the Mercedes brand is associated with German engineering and superior
quality, but the cars can hardly be called German anymore). 

-- 
Andreas

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