The hits seem to keep coming for Microsoft who has hard time imposing Vista on the market, faces issues with Excel, a flagship product, and lost an important legal battle with the EU Commission over its competitive behavior. While Microsoft's tactics justifiably cause customers to be concerned, I believe the weapon of market dominance ends up being a boomerang for a company because it:
- erodes its relational capital with customers and local communities,
- drives intense reactions from competitors and regulators and,
- probably leads to some form of complacency and arrogance of its personnel, who may end up believing that whatever they release will end up being bought by a market taken hostage by their employer.
The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."
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