Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Eike Preuss]

David Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>But if *every* vendor has to make that same choice, there is no place for 
>>that other 5% to go to buy another operating system.  So the other 
>>operating system(s) die off.  And those 5% become customers of Microsoft 
>>since there's no other choice left.  And *that* is where the legal 
>>problems start:  they gained market share by preventing consumers from 
>>finding competing products.
> 
> 
>     Right, except that's utterly absurd. If every vendor takes their tiny 
> cut of the 95%, a huge cut of the 5% is starting to look *REALLY* good.
> 

Sure, that would be true if the market would be / would have been really
global. In practice if you have a shop you have a limited 'region of
influence'. Optimally you are the only shop in this region that sells
the stuff, or perhaps there are a few shops that compete with you. Lets
say in your region are two shops competing with you, and you must decide
wether to sell product A (95%) or B (5%), but you may not sell both.
Decision 1: Sell A, share the 95% of the local market with two -> about
32% of the local market for all of you, if all perform equally good
Decision 2: Sell B -> you get the 5% of the market, the others 47% each

This calculation is probably still a very bad approximation of the
truth, but things are definitely not as easy as you state them.

EP