> ----------
> From: Brett Lorenzen[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 1998 1:30 PM
>
> Jack Killpatrick wrote:
>
> > Can anyone explain to me what "market allocation", as referred to
> above,
> > means?
>
> Communism. :0
>
> Basically, they each take a part of the market, and agree not to
> compete
> with each other in those markets. Each company gets all the income
> from
> its area, and can nicely balance budgets and manage costs without fear
> of competition.
>
>
very simply stated, for a lawyer <smile>
> Also makes it easy for a company to maintain larger markets against
> competitors. When you have a guaranteed lock on a national market,
> for
> instance, it's really hard for a new person to start in any region of
> that nation . . . if you *know* you get all the income that year from
> that market, you just raise prices somewhere else and lower them where
> competition occurs, and no one can compete with you.
>
in economics terms, called a barrier to entry. there are huge barriers
to entry in capital intensive businesses (think power generation or
aerospace, why do you think it was gov'ts that financed airbus?). there
are also barriers to exit -- which in the case of software markets, fall
on the shoulders of the end user .. ie, the cost of 'exiting one OS for
another' can be extremely high. Just ask barry <g> ...
> Or, in the simplest terms, coordinated monopolies.
>
> Still standing by my advice to MS: break the company up now and save
> yourselves a billion in litigation. :
>
another thing that would help -- although i don't know how it could be
legislated (or if it should be legislated) would be upgrade prices
honored for new versions of your software when you change OS. that would
remove a large barrier to exit. <shrug>
kathy
(whose talk went well, btw -- i think -- at least they laughed in the
right places, will be putting the 'slides' - html files - up this
evening or tomorrow -- thanks again to all for your braindumps!)
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