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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 36.15-0.6%Dec 24 12:59 PM EST

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To: wanna_bmw who wrote (150950)12/4/2001 4:40:28 PM
From: ptanner  Read Replies (1) of 186894
 
WMBM, re: "76-77%. you'd have a tough time calling them a monopoly in court"

The proposed Staples & Office Deport merger in 1998 would have combined two companies that each had about 5-8% of the total business supplies market. However the combination was denied by the Feds as anti-competitive. They were looking at a narrower market definition and this type of thinking could be applied to Intel or many other companies.

I found some info on my example - ftc.gov

"For example, in the proposed merger of Staples and Office Depot,
many people thought that the relevant market for antitrust analysis would consist of all
stores that sell office supplies. However, Staples and Office Depot had created a new
market segment called office supply "superstores" that provided a bundle of products
and services unavailable from other retailers. Extensive evidence, much of it from the
companies' own documents and from their pricing behavior, showed that other retailers
were not a competitive constraint on the pricing of Staples and Office Depot. The district
court agreed that office supply superstores constituted a separate market for purposes of
antitrust analysis. Because the merging companies were the two largest of only three firms
in that market, the court found that the merger would be anticompetitive and granted the
Commission's motion to enjoin the transaction.


The real question wrt monopolies should be whether a company has abused its monopoly position but even this, in the case of MSFT, doesn't seem to have clear consequences. I am not critical of Intel wrt monopoly abuses but feel that 75-80% market share is clearly indicative (but not conclusive) of a monopoly, particularly when there are high barriers to entry (design, fabs - though Via is using foundries).

-PT
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