<Technically there are other PC operating systems, but that isn't the issue and trotting out a list of them as a defense of MSFT practices isn't getting to the point.>
I hear this every time I reply to someone who says there is no competition. Either there is competition or there isn't. What I think most mean is that there are no other competitive OSs. That is a function of MGMT's execution and not Anti-trust laws. Lotus (as well as Wordperfect and Ashton-Tate) had the oppurtunity to take the market lead in GUI based productivity apps (they were a monopoly in thier respective productivity app fields), but they bet the ranch on the wrong horse, OS/2. OS/2 addressed all the things technical people needed, but ignored the mass market, the common user. That is where MSFT and Windows has, and still does, excel. They got thier product to market first, and they got productibity apps on thier GUI OS FIRST. This is what the market demanded, and this is what MSFT delivered. This is also why the champions of the time were toppled, they refused to obey the mass market and instead chose to obey the technical market.
Another example is the corporate workstation market. McNealy complains about MSFT's dominance, but he is the dominant player in this market. He is simply refusing to cave in to market demand and provide them what they want - lower prices and mroe productivity apps. Wintel provides this, Sun does not. Hence, Sun is losing market share to Wintel. Although Sun is teh dominant player, someone in the future is going to rewrite history and state that the enterprise monolith simply walked over everybody. This as we know today, is simply not true. |
