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: nommedeguerre who wrote (20831)	9/3/1998 10:55:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Microsoft had something like 95% of the non-IBM PC OS market at that time. By 1985 the death grip was firmly in place. DR-DOS had some sales. Not enough to dent MSFT's monopoly status. There was also SCO Unix, CPM in emulation, and even 370 and s/34 emulations and other oddities like smalltalk, p-system, TopView, etc, but the total for those was less than 1% on Intel. Commodore, Atari, Apple, and the rest of the non-PC, non-Intel hardware pack had maybe 10%. This in spite of vastly better performance and OS in some cases. Macintosh, Amiga, Occam parallel (500 mips in 1985!), etc. While CPM had probably over half of Intel (8080, z80, etc) PC OS sales average in 1981-1983, by 1985 the IBM/MSFT/Compaq combo had wiped them almost entirely out. It was a real credit to Kildall that his company survived the onslaught at all. 99% of CPM machine vendors were wiped out. OS/2 until around 1993 was a MSFT product unless you bought an IBM box. I had MSFT OS/2 v1.1 on a Compaq. IBM and MSFT worked together with Intel to promote their operating systems, and probably together had 85% or more of the entire small computer market after 1984. For part of that time xenix was a MSFT product, too, before it became SCO Unix(, and then part of Novell???) At some point in around 1986 IBM and MSFT together, cooperating very closely to promote the same OS product set, probably had 80% of sales of OS on all computers of any size. Then MSFT apparently decided it would rather have a co-monopoly with Intel than a co-monopoly with IBM. Thus NT, Win 3.11 peer networking, no more MSFT OS/2 SQL Server, Win 95, lack of NT support for Power PC, etc etc etc etc. Given that MSFT have always had partners, but with variously IBM, Intel, and now even Apple in partnership they have controlled the PC OS market now since arguably 1984 or 1985 without a break. Cheers, Chaz