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Very good point! Along those lines, it is interesting that as much as “evil” Microsoft dominated computing and leveraged their power in the 90’s, they still pr

Very good point! Along those lines, it is interesting that as much as “evil” Microsoft dominated computing and leveraged their power in the 90’s, they still provided a very open (in terms of building on) platform for an enormous number of third parties. Now Apple manages an enormous platform re iOS apps, but it is not open technologically or economically.

almatabata 3y ago
Apple and Microsoft have a very different market share. Windows has something around 85-90% desktop/laptop market share. So you can make a very good argument that they have a functional monopoly over the desktop OS market. Contrast this with Apple, they have around 10% desktop/laptop market share and around 50% of the smartphone market share. Here you could only argue that they have a duopoly with google on the smartphone OS market. Microsoft had to open up the platform or they would have gotten destroyed by antitrust laws there and then. They had to let other developers deploy on their OS and support them because if they failed the government would have gotten involved and forced them. So smartly they decided let us no destroy the nice thing we have and play as nice as we have to to keep our profits and our market share. And they mostly succeeded in that regard.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  The duopoly difference is real. But either side of a duopoly in a critical global market has tremendous power. Very hard, often impossible, to be competitive in mobile software if you don’t support iOS. Microsoft didn’t optimize Windows for third party developers because of legal action. Supporting third party developer innovation was the foundational Microsoft strategy, long before and after they got into operating systems. The legal issue was using their platform’s defaults and product bundling to kill the opportunities and economics for potentially competitive platforms (Netscape, the web as an OS platform replacement).

almatabata 3y ago

Apple and Microsoft have a very different market share. Windows has something around 85-90% desktop/laptop market share. So you can make a very good argument that they have a functional monopoly over the desktop OS market. Contrast this with Apple, they have around 10% desktop/laptop market share and around 50% of the smartphone market share. Here you could only argue that they have a duopoly with google on the smartphone OS market. Microsoft had to open up the platform or they would have gotten destroyed by antitrust laws there and then. They had to let other developers deploy on their OS and support them because if they failed the government would have gotten involved and forced them. So smartly they decided let us no destroy the nice thing we have and play as nice as we have to to keep our profits and our market share. And they mostly succeeded in that regard.

Nevermark 3y ago
The duopoly difference is real. But either side of a duopoly in a critical global market has tremendous power. Very hard, often impossible, to be competitive in mobile software if you don’t support iOS. Microsoft didn’t optimize Windows for third party developers because of legal action. Supporting third party developer innovation was the foundational Microsoft strategy, long before and after they got into operating systems. The legal issue was using their platform’s defaults and product bundling to kill the opportunities and economics for potentially competitive platforms (Netscape, the web as an OS platform replacement).