Bill Atkins wrote:
> "Rob Thorpe" <·······@realworldtech.com> writes:
>
> > I think it does. Most of the other companies in the space do not try
> > to compete with Microsoft, they stay in the high end. Only a very few
> > are trying to compete.
>
> Ehh? So if these other companies are not competing with Microsoft,
> how does this make Microsoft part of an oligopoly - i.e. a group of
> firms that dominate a market and have market power?
An oligopoly is normally defined as a situation where there are very
few companies in a market, regardless of their relative sizes. Even if
Microsoft and their part of the market did not exist there would be
relatively few OS vendors.
Maybe it would be most accurate to say that Microsoft has a monopoly in
the desktop operating system market, and is part of an oligopoly in the
server/high-end operating system market.
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: if Clisp is so good where are the commonly used apps?
Date:
Message-ID: <op.ti0vekx4pqzri1@pandora.upc.no>
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:34:41 +0100, Rob Thorpe <·······@realworldtech.com>
wrote:
> Bill Atkins wrote:
>> "Rob Thorpe" <·······@realworldtech.com> writes:
>>
>> > I think it does. Most of the other companies in the space do not try
>> > to compete with Microsoft, they stay in the high end. Only a very few
>> > are trying to compete.
>>
>> Ehh? So if these other companies are not competing with Microsoft,
>> how does this make Microsoft part of an oligopoly - i.e. a group of
>> firms that dominate a market and have market power?
>
> An oligopoly is normally defined as a situation where there are very
> few companies in a market, regardless of their relative sizes. Even if
> Microsoft and their part of the market did not exist there would be
> relatively few OS vendors.
>
> Maybe it would be most accurate to say that Microsoft has a monopoly in
> the desktop operating system market, and is part of an oligopoly in the
> server/high-end operating system market.
>
It dosn't have a monopoly. There are other options out there.
There is Mac and Linux. They may only constitute 10% of the market,
but you do have a choice. You would have to argue that they are using their
position to gain unfair advantage over their compeditors.
Microsoft has been thugh many courtcases in the past and a anti-trust
ruling has been suggested but never instated.
Truth of the matter has put more resources into an OS than any
other company in the past. Few companies could afford it.
Thus as time goes by Windows is gaining a functional advantage.
Windows Vista provides a significant effort in trying to make all
the complex functionality of a modern OS more accessible to novice
programmers.
3D, multimedia are things that have traditionally only been touched by
experrts by
I think you will see more and more companies will incorporate these
features
into their design.
As for unix they lost the momentumin their evolution some point in the
80's.
Now they are playing catch up and pretty badly at that.
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On 2006-11-14 15:04:58 -0500, "John Thingstad" <··············@chello.no> said:
> Microsoft has been thugh many courtcases in the past and a anti-trust
> ruling has been suggested but never instated.
This is factually incorrect. Microsoft have been found to be a monopoly
- the findings of fact were upheld on appeal, only the *remedy* (i.e.,
the punishment - Jacksons breakup order) was overturned, so the finding
of fact that MS is a monopoly in the PC operating system market is
still a legal fact in the US.
Moreover the final ruling *did* include remedies (i.e., punishments),
albeit much less severe ones than Judge Jackson's original order that
MS be split into two companies.