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Take your pick of any OEM executive inside the PC industry, and chances are they could have made a nice living roaming
the Old West with a pearl-handled pistol and a deck of cards.
These poker-faced executives have amassed fortunes by turning strategic bluffs into high-tech winnings. And nowhere have the winnings been more up for grabs than in Europe, where seven little-known OEMs have been dealt into one of the highest-stakes games in personal-computing history.
If the OEMs are bluffing, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 likely will conquer the Continent with little resistance. If they are not, IBM Corp. and its OS/2 operating system could be about to stage one of the greatest European upsets since the Spanish Armada set sail.
Just how these OEMs came to be dealt into such an exclusive game and exactly what they expect to walk away with is all part of an intriguing desktop tale. And while no one yet knows the tale's final outcome, most European PC executives agree that both IBM and Microsoft are expected to endure some difficult lessons in global marketing and OEM diplomacy.
"Where in the past Microsoft thought it had no competitor in operating systems, it has now accepted that this is no longer the case in Europe," said Richard Seibt, general manager of personal software marketing for IBM's German subsidiary. Seibt is now monitoring what has been labeled a counter OEM offensive, an attempt by Microsoft to sabotage the source of OS/2's newfound momentum in Europe.
"Microsoft has had to change their approach inside the operating system business, and that means they now have to fight," said Seibt, who is credited by other IBM executives with masterminding a plan to make Germany a springboard for OS/2 sales across Europe.
Seibt's scheme may be gaining momentum. IBM now projects that 40 percent of PCs being shipped in Europe will have Warp preloaded on them before year's end. What...