[ntSean]

That does sound ridiculous. They have market dominance because of the value that they offer. IBM is a great example of a company falling from grace; it happens all the time and can happen to Apple.

Rent-seeking is a seperate issue, but no different to the Industrial Age and how Railway providers would do the same. We have inadequate governance.

[RNAlfons]

> They have market dominance because of the value that they offer.

This isn't true for Microsoft.

They're a monopoly for most of the PCs on this planet and since they've been that for years now, changes to a different system which may still work out are hard and sometimes even impossible.

Same goes for the mobile infrastructure for different reasons. Someone who "grew up" in the Apple infrastructure will have a hard time changing to Android and vice versa. However people within the Android infrastructure have at least a greater choice of hardware (and for a few of them choice of an Android version).

[theshrike79]

Exactly.

Microsoft makes so completely bonkers amounts of money just from Windows and Office that they can use it to prop up other branches of their business that aren't generating profit yet.