Microsoft sees Zune effort a long haul

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Stunning response Harry!

Am I the only one who see's an incredible parallel between MS of the 90s (in the OS market) and Apple of the 00s (in the media player market)? You say we disagree but I actually agree with most everything you said. MS and Apple have done the exact same things with exactly the same consequences yet MS was the only one hit with anti-trust. This only strengthens my argument that the only difference is in the importance of the respective markets to economic stability.

There are no price escalations

Yet. This is an extremely young monopoly.

no coercive licenses

Apple actually has the most coercive license of them all! None! Not on its OS, not on its media players. The only exception is on cell phones, a market that Apple is not currently participating in. If Creative gets pissed at MS for Zune, Apple will not license FairPlay. Talk about...

no barriers to entry

Barriers to entry? How about a stockpile of FairPlay songs that are, by definition, unplayable on anything and everything not licensed by Apple? Come on, the whole "barrier to entry" on the OS market is because people have stockpiled/created so much Windows only software that switching platforms is an expensive proposition. The only difference, as I suggested above, is that the global economy doesn't rely on my ability to play FairPlay protected media. Hence, if Apple harmed consumers by tripling the price of iTMS songs once all competition had been destroyed, the economy would continue without skipping a beat. It is more dangerous when one company controls the OS that runs 95% of the world's vital software and hence, MS gets more attention for their monopoly than Apple ever will with hers.

It's just success, plain and simple.

Did MS get their monopoly before or after they were successful? Please. MS didn't come into existence with a pre-made monopoly. MS got their monopoly because they were successful. You can't be unsuccessful and gain a monopoly. MS too was successful, plain and simple.

It has also been facilitated by Microsoft's consolodation of competition under the Windows Media banner.

Agreed, Apple got here because her competition wasn't very good. Does that fact alone make it an acceptable monopoly then? One could very, very easily point to Apple's decision to kill the clones and IBM's decision to price OS/2 so high as proof of incompetent competition (hehe, sounds like an oxymoron!) but that didn't give MS a pass with their monopoly.

You then go off on your usual rant about MS being untrustworthy which really has nothing at all to do with whether or not Apple has a monopoly.

Posted by: NonZealot   Posted on: 07/28/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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