Taiwan-na keep XP, customers tell regulators
Microsoft’s latest difficulties in the XP-Vista switchover can be marked ‘Made In Taiwan’. The country’s Fair Trade Commission is investigating a claim that the withdrawal of XP leaves Microsoft in an unfair monopoly position.
The claim comes from the country’s Consumer Foundation (a private entity) and is based on a fairly simple argument: with Microsoft so dominant, taking XP off the shelves supposedly means people are ‘forced’ to buy Vista, which allows the company to charge exploitative prices.
The group is also arguing that, because people ‘don’t want’ Vista, they might not buy new computers, which has a knock-on effect on the local hardware market.
Hsieh Tien-Jen, who is chairman of the Consumer Foundation, is calling for a heavy fine for Microsoft. In theory the FTC could fine the firm up to 25 million Taiwan dollars (just under US$800,000). However, the Commission isn’t making any comment on the merits of the case, simply stating it will fully investigate it, which could take up to six months.
To support its case, the consumer group has cited two surveys of customers. One says 67% of people think Microsoft should still be selling XP; such a statement of pure opinion that is almost certainly worthless in legal terms. The other survey shows 56% of people said that it they bought a Vista-enabled machine, they’d install XP in its place. But that’s purely speculative and doesn’t prove any legal point.
To win the case, the group would likely have to prove that only offering one version of Windows allowed Microsoft to charge much higher prices than if XP acted as a form of competition to Vista.
The problem is that argument falls apart once you accept Mac OS and Linux as viable alternatives. And despite Microsoft’s history of anti-trust legal issues, there doesn’t seem to be any fundamental obstacle to stop anyone in Taiwan buying either rival system.
Indeed, as one antitrust expert told Bloomberg, it would be a pretty strange ruling that effectively forced a company to continue selling a product it wanted to withdraw from the market.
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August 21st, 2008
The problem is that argument falls apart once you accept Mac OS and Linux as viable alternatives. And despite Microsoft’s history of anti-trust legal issues, there doesn’t seem to be any fundamental obstacle to stop anyone in Taiwan buying either rival system.
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Other than the great difficulty in finding Apple products and the complete lack of support, no, there is no difficulty with Apple systems. Linux too is a product most users know nothing about.
The fact is that Microsoft has close relations with the government and has obtained almost total control over the market here. Hence it has monopoly power out of proportion to that it might have in other markets. That is why consumers are so sensitive to being forced to purchase Vista instead of XP. That was my view the other day when I tried to purchase to XP-equipped laptops and was forced to either pay to upgrade to XP or get Vista, a product I didn’t want, for no extra payment.
One of the most disturbing things about this kerfluffle is the assured, patronizing tone of writers in the US. Those Taiwanese must be crazy! Imagine not wanting the product we feel is better! Marketing histories in Asia are littered with the carcasses of products Americans felt were better. Apparently Microsoft never bothered to find out what consumers wanted. Surely the first responsibility of any entity that wants to make a profit serving customers is to find out what they want.
There are many ways Microsoft could have handled this. But instead they chose the one way guaranteed to peeve their customers. And listening to the arrogant, ignorant hogwash flowing out of the US tech world on this issue, it is easy to see why US products have a rep for being inferior to Japanese and European in so many areas.
Michael