by Kevin Coates | Oct 27, 2009 | Antitrust, Apple, Microsoft
Scoble has a great piece on why he thinks Apple’s iPhone isn’t going to be pushed aside anytime soon: 85,000 reasons why Apple’s iPhone isn’t going to be disrupted. The availability of large numbers of applications valued by users is one of the arguments that was used to support the finding that Microsoft had market power in the US and EU antitrust cases. In the US, the District Court’s findings of fact discusses the applications barrier to entry starting at para. 37: Consumer interest in a PC operating system derives primarily from the ability of that system to run applications. The consumer wants an operating system that runs not only types of applications that he knows he will want to use, but also those types in which he might develop an interest later. Also, the consumer knows that if he chooses an operating system with enough demand to support multiple applications in each product category, he will be less likely to find himself straitened later by having to use an application whose features disappoint him. Finally, the average user knows that, generally speaking, applications improve through successive versions. He thus wants an operating system for which successive generations of his favorite applications will be released — promptly at that. The fact that a vastly larger number of applications are written for Windows than for other PC operating systems attracts consumers to Windows, because it reassures them that their interests will be met as long as they use Microsoft’s product. For the EU, see the confirmation in the CFI’s Microsoft judgment of September 2007 (at para. 1088) upholding the Commission 2004 Microsoft...