Microsoft's Market Share Is Protected by a Barrier of Entry: An Explanation

B. The Applications Barrier to Entry

1. Description of the Applications Barrier to Entry

36. Microsoft’s dominant market share is protected by the same barrier that helps define the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. As explained above, the applications barrier would prevent an aspiring entrant into the relevant market from drawing a significant number of customers away from a dominant incumbent even if the incumbent priced its products substantially above competitive levels for a significant period of time.

Because Microsoft’s market share is so dominant, the barrier has a similar effect within the market: It prevents Intel-compatible PC operating systems other than Windows from attracting significant consumer demand, and it would continue to do so even if Microsoft held its prices substantially above the competitive level.

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.

38. Software development is characterized by substantial economies of scale. The fixed costs of producing software, including applications, is very high. By contrast, marginal costs are very low. Moreover, the costs of developing software are “sunk” — once expended to develop software, resources so devoted cannot be used for another purpose.

The result of economies of scale and sunk costs is that application developers seek to sell as many copies of their applications as possible. An application that is written for one PC operating system will operate on another PC operating system only if it is ported to that system, and porting applications is both time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, application developers tend to write first to the operating system with the most users — Windows.

Developers might then port their applications to other operating systems, but only to the extent that the marginal added sales justify the cost of porting. In order to recover that cost, ISVs that do go to the effort of porting frequently set the price of ported applications considerably higher than that of the original versions written for Windows.

39. Consumer demand for Windows enjoys positive network effects. A positive network effect is a phenomenon by which the attractiveness of a product increases with the number of people using it. The fact that there is a multitude of people using Windows makes the product more attractive to consumers.

The large installed base attracts corporate customers who want to use an operating system that new employees are already likely to know how to use, and it attracts academic consumers who want to use software that will allow them to share files easily with colleagues at other institutions.

The main reason that demand for Windows experiences positive network effects, however, is that the size of Windows’ installed base impels ISVs to write applications first and foremost to Windows, thereby ensuring a large body of applications from which consumers can choose.

The large body of applications thus reinforces demand for Windows, augmenting Microsoft’s dominant position and thereby perpetuating ISV incentives to write applications principally for Windows. This self-reinforcing cycle is often referred to as a “positive feedback loop.”

40. What for Microsoft is a positive feedback loop is for would-be competitors a vicious cycle. For just as Microsoft’s large market share creates incentives for ISVs to develop applications first and foremost for Windows, the small or non-existent market share of an aspiring competitor makes it prohibitively expensive for the aspirant to develop its PC operating system into an acceptable substitute for Windows.

To provide a viable substitute for Windows, another PC operating system would need a large and varied enough base of compatible applications to reassure consumers that their interests in variety, choice, and currency would be met to more-or-less the same extent as if they chose Windows.

Even if the contender attracted several thousand compatible applications, it would still look like a gamble from the consumer’s perspective next to Windows, which supports over 70,000 applications.

The amount it would cost an operating system vendor to create that many applications is prohibitively large. Therefore, in order to ensure the availability of a set of applications comparable to that available for Windows, a potential rival would need to induce a very large number of ISVs to write to its operating system.

41. In deciding whether to develop an application for a new operating system, an ISV’s first consideration is the number of users it expects the operating system to attract. Out of this focus arises a collective-action problem: Each ISV realizes that the new operating system could attract a significant number of users if enough ISVs developed applications for it; but few ISVs want to sink resources into developing for the system until it becomes established.

Since everyone is waiting for everyone else to bear the risk of early adoption, the new operating system has difficulty attracting enough applications to generate a positive feedback loop. The vendor of a new operating system cannot effectively solve this problem by paying the necessary number of ISVs to write for its operating system, because the cost of doing so would dwarf the expected return.

42. Counteracting the collective-action phenomenon is another known as the “firstmover incentive.” For an ISV interested in attracting users, there may be an advantage to offering the first and, for a while, only application in its category that runs on a new PC operating system. The user base of the new system may be small, but every user of that system who wants such an application will be compelled to use the ISV’s offering.

Moreover, if demand for the new operating system suddenly explodes, the first mover will reap large sales before any competitors arrive. An ISV thus might be drawn to a new PC operating system as a “protected harbor.”

Once first-movers stake claims to the major categories of applications, however, there is a strong chance that the new operating system could stall; it would not support the most familiar applications, nor the variety and number of applications, that attract large numbers of consumers, and there would no longer exist a first-mover incentive to attract additional ISVs to the important application categories.

Although the upstart operating system might find itself with enough applications support to hold a fraction of the market, the collective-action phenomenon would still prevent the system from gaining the kind of positive feedback momentum that can turn a fringe entrant into a rival that would put competitive pressure on Windows.

43. The cost to a would-be entrant of inducing ISVs to write applications for its operating system exceeds the cost that Microsoft itself has faced in inducing ISVs to write applications for its operating system products, for Microsoft never confronted a highly penetrated market dominated by a single competitor.

Of course, the fact that it is extremely difficult for an efficient would-be rival to accumulate enough applications support to compete with Windows does not mean that sustaining its own applications support is effortless for Microsoft.

In fact, if Microsoft stopped investing the hundreds of millions of dollars it spends each year inducing ISVs to write applications for Windows, it might become easier than it currently is for a competitor to develop its own positive feedback loop.

But given that Windows today enjoys overwhelmingly more applications support than any other PC operating system, it would still take that competitor years to develop the necessary momentum.

Plus, while Microsoft may spend more on platform “evangelization,” even in relative terms, than any other PC operatingsystem vendor, it is not difficult to understand why it is worthwhile for the principal beneficiary of the applications barrier to devote more resources to augmenting it than aspiring rivals are willing to expend in speculative efforts to erode it.

44. Microsoft continually releases “new and improved” versions of its PC operating system. Each time it does, Microsoft must convince ISVs to write applications that take advantage of new APIs, so that existing Windows users will have incentive to buy an upgrade.

Since ISVs are usually still earning substantial revenue from applications written for the last version of Windows, Microsoft must convince them to write for the new version.

Even if ISVs are slow to take advantage of the new APIs, though, no applications barrier stands in the way of consumers adopting the new system, for Microsoft ensures that successive versions of Windows retain the ability to run applications developed for earlier versions.

In fact, since ISVs know that consumers do not feel locked into their old versions of Windows and that new versions have historically attracted substantial consumer demand, ISVs will generally write to new APIs as long as the interfaces enable attractive, innovative features.

Microsoft supplements developers’ incentives by extending various ‘seals of approval’ — visible to consumers, investors, and industry analysts — to those ISVs that promptly develop new versions of their applications adapted to the newest version of Windows.

In addition, Microsoft works closely with ISVs to help them adapt their applications to the newest version of the operating system — a process that is in any event far easier than porting an application from one vendor’s PC operating system to another’s.

In sum, despite the substantial resources Microsoft expends inducing ISVs to develop applications for new versions of Windows, the company does not face any obstacles nearly as imposing as the barrier to entry that vendors and would-be vendors of other PC operating systems must overcome.

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This court case Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ) retrieved on 1-24-2023 from justice.gov is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction.