3 ms·

You’re missing the primary reason: they controlled pricing. What price could other operating systems makers charge in the late 90s, early 2000s? It didn’t matte

You’re missing the primary reason: they controlled pricing. What price could other operating systems makers charge in the late 90s, early 2000s? It didn’t matter, Microsoft had forced OEMs to only sell PCs with Windows or not be able to sell Windows per-installs at all. If Apple said to Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile that they could only sell iPhones if they only sold iPhones and _then_ used that position to bundle other services they would look like Microsoft. I could see potentially on the supply side (buying all of TMSCs most cutting edge capacity) Apple has that power, but on the consumer side they have no price control in any market (Apple products are not a market).

rezonant 3y ago
This is conflating two issues identified with Microsoft's practices during this time. Both of which got them in trouble. Microsoft abused it's dominant position in the PC OS market to (A) lock out competition in the OS market and (B) gain footholds in other markets and extinguish competition (such as for the web browser market). It's a strained argument to say that if they hadn't have put the OEM agreements in place that they would've been completely unchecked by the antitrust authorities in the browser market.