Title: Microsoft Domination

It is surprising how many IT commentators moan about Microsoft's domination of the software industry (actually of the PC software industry) when there is nothing to stop them from using other vendors' products. Francis rightly alludes to the difficulty of other operating systems' making much headway, as consumers are primarily interested in applications - the vast majority of which run on Windows. Nevertheless it is still open to the consumer to use those alternative operating systems and it is becoming more viable by the day.

One thing that all these commentators overlook is that the free market is a dynamic system and, historically, entrenched incumbents never remain unassailable indefinitely, unless with government assistance - and even then the future is not guaranteed. I'm sure the same will apply to Microsoft. Windows won't remain dominant forever.

However, let's assume that it will remain dominant for the next ten years. It is certainly far easier to use other applications software besides Microsoft's than it is to use other operating systems software. Microsoft earns about 40% of its revenues from Microsoft Office. It has about 90% of the market for office suites. Yet there are plenty of alternatives that we could use. The fact that these alternatives aren't used means that, when all things are considered, most consumers consider Office to be better than alternative purchases that they could make.

Francis suggests that Microsoft products^[1] are more expensive than they need be. Well, this is very much a variable perception. It depends on which products you are looking at and whether other vendors are offering similar but lower priced products. Some Microsoft products seem expensive compared to the alternatives. Others are cheap. Windows itself (including NT) is cheap compared to the likes of Sun Solaris. On the whole, the major reason for Microsoft's dominance is that it has produced a mass market of comparatively cheap software. The general trend seems to be that it lowers the general cost of products in whatever market it chooses to enter. To see this, one has to take a historical perspective. Yes, Microsoft Office is more expensive than its competitors - now. Now, that it has become the overwhelming market leader. But if you look at the situation when Office just started to emerge you will find that the likes of Lotus 123 and WordPerfect for DOS were selling as standalone products at prices similar to what Microsoft now charges for Office.

In the developer tools market, Microsoft's products are, quite frankly, usually a good deal better value for money than those of its competitors. Compare the price of Visual C++ to Borland Delphi for example. Also, compare their upgrade prices.

Francis complains of Microsoft's products being feature rich and bug ridden. I suppose you could view this as a compliment and a reproach in the same sentence. I don't contest that Microsoft's products are bug ridden but whenever this is alluded to it always seems to infer that:

In my experience, other vendors' software is either just as buggy as Microsoft's or more so. The fact of the matter is that the task of producing bug-free software is one that the software industry has yet to solve. It is true that the frequency of software upgrades does not help (though, ironically, Microsoft is regularly ridiculed for delays in releases of its operating systems). But, again, other vendors are just as frequent with their upgrades as Microsoft is. Everyone wants revenue. Everyone wants to make money. This is capitalism, whether one likes it or not. As for the consumer, they don't have to buy the upgrades! I'm writing this with Word 97 but I have no intention of upgrading to Office 2000.

The one thing I will say about bugs is that vendors should be prepared to acknowledge them as such and should be prepared to fix them free of charge. Francis says that we need more competition. Fine, but I'd be willing to bet that this in itself won't make the problems of buggy software and frequent upgrades go away.

Yes, I agree. The fundamental problem with software is that it does not wear out. Writing a perfect product would be a complete disaster because what will you sell in five years time? Continual change and addition of features is essential for long term survival in the applications market. Fixing bugs detracts from resources for developing the next (to be paid for) release. Some how we must change the rules of the game. But how?