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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (32128)	11/6/1999 3:59:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

RTev:Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft?s share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft?s dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft?s customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows." [34] 1. MSFT's share of Intel market is large and stable and so is AAPL's position with respect with Motorola cpus. I am not sure I get the judges point here. 2. MSFT market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. What is that barrier? Should MSFT reduce the number of lines of code in Windows to accommodate the judge's sense of how business ought to work. IBM chose to exit the space. IBM certainly had the resources but chose not to duke it out in the market place- rather they chose to take the political route. Should MSFT turn over its customers- who freely chose Windows to SUNW or AAPL to level the playing field? What about the various flavors of Unix taken in the aggregate don't they count as competition? I felt no coercion on the part of MSFT to make my decision. I did feel in the final analysis that once Windows reached a satisfactory level of ease of use that I would buy same and after years of using a Mac I switched to Windows not to mention that all of the internet apps. in the financial world were built for Windows and not Mac. Should MSFT be punished for learning from the sons of Nippon that you go for the market first and patiently wait for the strong margins that will come with market dominance because of the economies of scale wrought thereby? If there was and is a barrier to compete it is one of default as the competitors - one by one- chose not to compete and please don't tell me that IBM didn't have the resources. They lacked the corporate will. 3. As a result of "that barrier" MSFT's customers have no alternative. He ties this conclusion to the strongly worded but vaguely supported phrase" high barrier to entry". In the beginning they had alternatives and those competitors chose not to remain and compete. This has introduced a new paradigm of business competition. Give the competition the marketplace and then come back and claim they have a monopoly. MSFT did not buy the competition out they simply beat them out in the market place. You and all the other complainers could have purchased a Mac. With this kind of "reasoning" I would not be surprised if the DOJ didn't turn its sights on INTC next. The truth is MSFT produced a better value than those that dropped by the wayside as the public voted with their dollars. If the people were and are dissatisfied with the Windows value why didn't /don't they migrate to AAPL? Even after IBM and DR dropped out the people still had a choice - buy Unix,Mac or MSFT. Until Windows 98 I stayed with Mac. I also paid a lot more for a Mac than I would have for an equivalent Wintel system. This is just another further encroachment of the government into our lives. They take a good deal of my money and now they seek to tell how to spend the dollars that they allow me to keep. To paraphrase a famous liberal, "This day shall live in (judicial) infamy" Watch out INTC and pharmaceutical industry - here comes da DOJ. This travesty is as bad as Waco. JFD