Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearded One who wrote (18772)	4/28/1998 4:04:00 AM
From: damniseedemons	Respond to of 24154

Well, OEMs are actually trying to put downward price pressure on Windows. They're may do this by trying to nickel-and-dime Microsoft with other products--not buying Microsoft Mice, not bundling software like Encarta, etc. And believe it or not, it may actually have an affect. Windows 9x OEM pricing is certainly not going higher, and there is some possibility that it goes lower (and/or possibility that Microsoft loses revenues in terms of fewer Mice sold or less bundled software).

To: Bearded One who wrote (18772)	4/28/1998 12:00:00 PM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Respond to of 24154

They don't have to cut off an OEM. They could raise the price of Windows by $10 a copy. They could ship Windows 98 to them about a month later than everyone else. They could not share information about how Windows works with certain components. I'm sure there's a hundred things they could do to cause various levels of damage to the OEMs. These are all various forms of price and non-price discrimination, which Microsoft certainly has an incentive to engage in against downstream competitor/distributors if Microsoft has monopoly power in the OS market. Mr. Economedes, whose paper I panned a few posts back, uses mathematical equations to prove this very point. It makes sense that such forms of non-price discrimination are a violation of antitrust laws, again if Microsoft has monopoly power in the OS market. If Microsoft has such power, then, by definition, they will be able to these and other means to restrict entry and raise prices. If not, then all the price and non-price discrimination in the world is not going to allow them to to restrict entry and raise prices. All it will do is backfire. The universal perception, the Received Dogma if you will, is that Microsoft does have monopoly power in the OS market. I certainly am not in a position to challenge the Received Dogma, at least not yet. That's why I think Microsoft needs to be broken up, and why Bill Gates should do it sooner rather than wait for DOJ to do it later in ways he might not like. I do, however, believe that a direct challenge by an OEM to Microsoft's discriminatory practices, a calling of Microsoft's bluff if you will, would provide an interesting challenge to this universally-held perception. And who knows -- just maybe that perception will go poof and the rationale for DOJ intervention will go right along with it.