4 ms·

Windows had 95% market share. Apple has barely 50. It's a big difference

munk-a 5y ago
50% is plenty enough for serious considerations of anti-trust actions. If our system worked Windows never would have reached 95% in the first place. There's also a significant question about what you do with that control when you have it.
smoldesu 5y ago
Yeah, but you could also download separate browser engines without hacking your Windows device. "Big difference" indeed.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  you can do that on android if you want. which has 50% of the market share
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    You could also use MacOS Tiger if you wanted an OS that didn't ship with Internet Explorer installed. Problem solved guys!
    - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
      apple doesn't have an overwhelming market position. just because you don't like it doesn't mean they have to change
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Antitrust's metrics aren't based entirely on marketshare.
    - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
      Mostly is.
      - monocasa 5y ago
        I wouldn't even go that far. It's using what marketshare you have in an anticompetitive way, particularly leveraging across domains anticompetitively. 90% marketshare that you don't utilize anticompetitively? Sounds great. 50% marketshare that you utilize anticompetitively particularly across other domains? That's an antitrust issue.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> Windows had 95% market share. Apple has barely 50. It's a big difference It's not. 50% market share is more than enough to have significant market power. Especially when the rest of the market is only a single company and barriers to entry are enormous. (Remember that Microsoft -- the company with 95% desktop market share -- tried and failed to enter this market.)
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Tried is a generous word for Microsoft’s effort. They barely invested anything into their devices and retail experience, and then pulled the plug as soon as they had a decent version of their mobile OS. If they had any chutzpah, they would have continued plowing their billions in profit into improving their device, and coming out with innovations similar to Apple’s own chips. Obviously, Microsoft’s C suite does not think their org can do better than collect the rent from Excel licenses and Azure.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Microsoft did spend billions of dollars trying make Windows Phone work. It comes down to chicken and egg. Users don't want a phone with no apps, developers don't make apps for a phone with no users. In some kind of theoretical sense it should be possible to overcome this with enough money. They could have given away a hundred million phones for nothing while making cash payments to app developers. It's an open question whether this would have cost them tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars. What is not in question is that it is a crazy huge amount of money that maybe a half dozen companies in the world even have to throw around like that, one of them was Microsoft, and two of the others are Apple and Google. Apparently no one else is even interested in making the attempt.

50% is plenty enough for serious considerations of anti-trust actions. If our system worked Windows never would have reached 95% in the first place. There's also a significant question about what you do with that control when you have it.

smoldesu 5y ago

Yeah, but you could also download separate browser engines without hacking your Windows device. "Big difference" indeed.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
you can do that on android if you want. which has 50% of the market share
- smoldesu 5y ago
  You could also use MacOS Tiger if you wanted an OS that didn't ship with Internet Explorer installed. Problem solved guys!
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    apple doesn't have an overwhelming market position. just because you don't like it doesn't mean they have to change
- monocasa 5y ago
  Antitrust's metrics aren't based entirely on marketshare.
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    Mostly is.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      I wouldn't even go that far. It's using what marketshare you have in an anticompetitive way, particularly leveraging across domains anticompetitively. 90% marketshare that you don't utilize anticompetitively? Sounds great. 50% marketshare that you utilize anticompetitively particularly across other domains? That's an antitrust issue.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> Windows had 95% market share. Apple has barely 50. It's a big difference It's not. 50% market share is more than enough to have significant market power. Especially when the rest of the market is only a single company and barriers to entry are enormous. (Remember that Microsoft -- the company with 95% desktop market share -- tried and failed to enter this market.)

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Tried is a generous word for Microsoft’s effort. They barely invested anything into their devices and retail experience, and then pulled the plug as soon as they had a decent version of their mobile OS. If they had any chutzpah, they would have continued plowing their billions in profit into improving their device, and coming out with innovations similar to Apple’s own chips. Obviously, Microsoft’s C suite does not think their org can do better than collect the rent from Excel licenses and Azure.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Microsoft did spend billions of dollars trying make Windows Phone work. It comes down to chicken and egg. Users don't want a phone with no apps, developers don't make apps for a phone with no users. In some kind of theoretical sense it should be possible to overcome this with enough money. They could have given away a hundred million phones for nothing while making cash payments to app developers. It's an open question whether this would have cost them tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars. What is not in question is that it is a crazy huge amount of money that maybe a half dozen companies in the world even have to throw around like that, one of them was Microsoft, and two of the others are Apple and Google. Apparently no one else is even interested in making the attempt.