Larry Ellison Quotes

Netweaver was going to be the number one middleware player in the world. We heard about Netweaver day and night. Oracle became number one. No one talks about Netweaver.

We’re far behind [Microsoft]. They are 3 time bigger than we are. They have a monopoly and we don’t—darnit!

At Tatas, we believe that if we are not among the top three in an industry, we should look seriously at what it would take to become one of the top three players.. or think about exiting the industry

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.

When you start losing market share, it's really tough to gain it back; you need the product portfolio and presence in many markets.

I'd rather Apple cannibalize Apple than somebody else cannibalize Apple.

There is a healthy competition as there would be in any business. But we do not spend our days thinking about what Marvel is doing.

All competitors are fierce competitors; Vodafone is the world's second largest company. We fight it each day. Idea Cellular is big and successful, too. Competition is competition; we are used to it.

When you compete with Wal-Mart, even if you think you've found a niche don't ever become complacent.

As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess.

This [Asia, Australia & New Zealand] is going to be the world't largest market. If we're not there setting the rules, then somebody else is.

Most companies in a capitalistic system compete mightily to obtain monopolistic positions so they can avoid capitalistic competition thereafter. Whenever a business person must compete for price, he tends to describe that derisively as a “commodity business” and tries to remedy the situation.

Our mission has always been to be leaders in each of our businesses, which is one, two, or three.

You've got to remember there's intense competition between Microsoft and Amazon.

I won't speak for the entertainment industry. I speak for Disney. I've seen people in the industry come to work every morning paranoid about what the other person or other company is doing. That means you're spending time and focus on somebody else's business instead of your own.

We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.

Market share is key.

We've got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone.

If you bet on Microsoft, you are not going to ask anymore, 'Hey, where is the innovation?' The challenge going forward is how do we keep up with it.

We compete with Dell and HP. Now, we are going to compete with Sony and Best Buy. Are we going to be like Best Buy? No. Are we going to be a small Dell? No. We are going to be uniquely Gateway.

In a commodity business, it's very hard to be smarter than your dumbest competitor.

The best mental effort in the game of business is concentrated on the major problem of securing the consumer's dollar before the other fellow gets it.

Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.

Our economic competitors ... are eating us for lunch, and we can get in the game or not. We can be at the table, or we can be on the table.