Haiku: BeOS Reborn

[Derek Broughton]

Odd wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Odd wrote:
>> 
>>> Derek Broughton wrote:
>>>> Odd wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Michael Haney wrote:
>>>>>> IBM just couldn't compete with
>>>>>> Micro$oft's marketing department
>>>>> Not only that, they couldn't compete with themselves. Back then, IBM
>>>>> was divided in several units that competed internally. This meant that
>>>>> IBM's own PC unit used Windows instead of OS/2. Talk about shooting
>>>>> themselves in the foot.
>>>> To be fair to IBM, that wasn't IBM's fault.  That was the US Department
>>>> of Justice and anti-trust legislation, back when the DoJ actually had
>>>> teeth and didn't just do big-businesses bidding.
>>> That may be. But I still don't see why they couldn't use OS/2 on
>>> the PCs they sold. It's not like they didn't have sufficient competition
>>> in Windows.
>> 
>> They _could_ have used it - but they had to be able to justify it.  One
>> IBM unit would have to pay _retail_ for the OS produced by a different
>> unit.
> 
> Sure. But that is easily solved. Just set the retail price low enough
> for everybody.

Except that that isn't a solution - Microsoft sells Windows to manufacturers 
at _below_ cost.  If you set your retail price that low, you go out of 
business...  MS can afford to sell their OS cheap (they could afford not to 
charge at all) because their main profit is in Office, etc.  IBM didn't have 
that - though _possibly_ they could have done (iirc, they bought Lotus)
> 
>> Given that MS was (and still is) encouraging everybody to install their
>> OS for far less than retail, and IBM would have been in violation of
>> court orders to offer a rebate to their own divisions, it was impossible
>> for IBM to compete in their own shop!
> 
> Not if they did what I said above. But I suspect they didn't.
 
Of course they didn't - they couldn't afford to.
-- 
derek