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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gerald Walls who wrote (31378)	4/27/2000 10:22:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Gerald, You can use the nomenclature of your choice. We can both be childish at the same time. Re: opportunism What you say about the genesis of the IBM-M$FT relationship doesn't contradict anything I've said, Gerald. Your spin is that Gates wasn't opportunistic mine is that he was (not that there is anything wrong with being opportunistic). The use of that adjective in both our postings is a matter of opinion. What is a fact, however, is that IBM & M$FT signed an exclusive deal for MS-DOS to run on the IBM-PC. Apple competed with Wintel not with M$FT directly. They suffered from the expense of their hardware on a price/ performance basis against the PC. It also helped that IBM had a huge corporate presence. Their imprimatur on the PC gave it a certain cachet with IT buyers that Apple couldn't hope to get. The real battleground between the DOJ & M$FT, however, is the home market, not the office market. SUNW has never had a presence in the retail market. Historically, they have been a supplier for the scientific and engineering markets then they have moved into the general computing market for enterprise systems. It was AFTER that they entered into the internet market. So, no, contrary to popular belief SUNW has never competed head-to-head with M$FT except in the low-end corporate market, and that has only been a recent development. It's true that "any hardware and software" is a competitor, but you have to divide the entire computer business into markets before you can understand what anti-trust is all about. If you were to say that IBM mainframes are in competition with M$FT, then M$FT wouldn't have a monopoly at all, would they Gerald??? M$FT certainly couldn't be accused of predatory pricing their O/S and applications to try & replace MVS or VM and all the S/390's in the world, could they??? That would be patently ridiculous. No, they couldn't, so what the court does is say that the market for PC's constitutes a single market that CAN BE MONOPOLIZED by somebody. As for Apple, you have to remember that they couldn't afford to sell their PC's at prices that would compete with the IBM-PC. Remember, IBM didn't OWN the IBM-PC. They made the spec for it PUBLIC. That means you own it as much as does IBM. That fact was problematic for ALL vendors of PCs, and it is a fact that is not lost on the DOJ case, either. It isn't IBM's "fault" that their open-spec PC outsold Apple & everyone else, it is the IMPACT of a proprietary O/S running on it and its attendant IMPACT on the apps market for software that has caused such a stir. Your attempt to compare Apple & M$FT as competitors is disengenuous and self-serving, Gerald. Did they compete for the same prospective customers? Yes. Was the playing field level? No. Did Apple suffer because of it? Yes, to some extent, but they made their own mistakes too. Is Apple still in business? Yes. Are they making money? Yes. Does that mean M$FT isn't a monopoly? No. Does that mean M$FT isn't guilty of anti-trust violations? No. Your use of the word "lousy" to characterize a failed effort by M$FT to promote their software is interesting. It's true that if the software is so poor, people won't buy it. The key phrase, IMO, is "good enough". You use the word "pretty good" and I have the feeling we're both talking about a similar product quality. M$FT has published sub-standard software (not necessarily lousy) over and over and over again and still managed to capture the market for it. That is because it was "good enough" AND, more importantly, it ran better on THEIR O/S than did the competition. But that is not good enough for the consumer. You don't want to buy a car that is "good enough", you want to spend your hard-earned money on the "best car available for the money", right??? Otherwise everyone would end up driving Yugo's or Skoda's. Those cars were "good enough" for the socialist market. It is also true that M$FT used the tried & true method of locking out the competition by making sure the software didn't run on their O/S before the fight with NSCP started. they slowly realized that the same effect could be achieved through their legal & marketing departments in the form of contracts that locked out the competition. Don't forget, the judge in the case carefully considered what had happened BEFORE the Netscape fiasco as well as what had happened afterward. The evidence brought forth in the trial pointed to the kinds of abuses by M$FT that I have described above and it backs up the original premise for the lawsuit: that it is for the betterment of the consuming public to have competition in the PC desktop market than for it to be under one controlling trust. Product quality will rise and prices will fall for desktop PC software and services just like they have for PC hardware.