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To: Codfish who wrote (4564)	4/5/1999 1:01:00 AM
From: Bargain Hunter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

I don't think it was exactly like that Bargain. As you note,IBM did not understand that there was a PC software game. When they licensed DOS from Microsoft, it never occurred to them that a small operation in Gates' garage could cause them any problem. Then Gates began to license the product to all PC makers. Although Gates did not know the magnitude of what they had you're right, he did parlay it into an incredible force. IBM simply opened the door to Microsoft's monopoly. Apple ensured that Microsoft would succeed by not licensing their O/S to allow cloning. I agree that licensing was crucial to the value of the monopoly, but it wasn't key to the creation of it. That was done by IBM when they decided to sell shrink-wrapped compiled software. MSFT has done extremely well at avoiding any abrupt transition in the end-user software business. Windows 3 could run DOS software, Windows 95 could run Windows 3 software and Windows NT (aka 2000) can run Windows 95 software. Intel's chip monopoly is much weaker because the competition can pick off the lower end of the market by making fast clones of older chips. MSFT's software monopoly is harder to break without a revolution. Browsers offered one possibility and you saw how far MSFT went to break Netscape. Java is the next battle and the outcome of that one is still not clear. The key for this thread is to understand both the power and the limits of MSFT's monopoly. Many people regard them as a huge threat because they "always win". But they gained that reputation entirely within the PC space, leveraging off the packaged software business. Their best bet in the embedded space is with PC-like devices running WinCE where there is also a potential packaged software business. They have no leverage yet into the hard real-time, more deeply embedded market. Does anyone know how they expect to accomplish this?