District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said in June that Microsoft should be split in two as its sentence for abusing its dominant position in the personal computer operating system market.
Look what happened to IBM when it ceded the personal computer operating system to Microsoft and the processors to Intel, or when Microsoft allowed Apple and Google to dominate the mobile operating platform.
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Long focused in personal computers on supplying operating system software, while leaving the hardware side to others, a move into the hardware side of the business would be a bold shift in direction.
This software colossus's domination of the personal computer's operating-system market is complete.
Founded in 1975, it rose swiftly to dominate the world of personal computing with its Windows operating system and Office suite of word-processing and other productivity tools.
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Fixated upon putting out an updated operating system for personal computers (Vista then later Windows 7) it let its 45% market share in smart phones circa 2007 disappear.
Google announced, in a blog post, that it would launch an operating system for personal computers, thus opening a direct assault on Microsoft, which has dominated the market for years.
In a contractual masterstroke, Microsoft was allowed to licence the operating system to other manufacturers, spawning an industry of "IBM-compatible" personal computers which depended on Microsoft's operating system.
And again, none of them holds out the prospect of domination in the way that the operating system dominates the personal computer.
MS-DOS and later Windows as the dominant operating system for the personal computer thanks to its own pioneering efforts, the brilliance of its business strategy and the network effects that give a single standard inherent advantages over any rivals.
At Apple's annual Macworld event on January 10th, Steve Jobs, the company's chief executive, unveiled what many fans had been expecting: the first Macintosh computers based on chips made by Intel, which also power the vast majority of personal computers that run Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Its Windows operating system controls more than 90% of all personal computers.
Vista is more than an operating system that will eventually live on nine out of ten personal computers in the world.
Microsoft is also developing its own search technology and ultimately plans to integrate it into Windows, the operating system that runs 94% of the world's personal computers.
The research firm International Data Corp. believes Windows 8 is so confusing that the new operating system has deepened a yearlong decline in the sales of personal computers, which aren't being replaced as frequently as more people embrace smartphones and tablets.
Currently, there is an exception for personal jailbreaking (allowing individuals to install unapproved applications by altering the phone's operating system), but developing, selling, trafficking or discussing the underlying technology is still illegal and there are no personal exceptions for tablets or other devices.
The big break came in 1980 when an agreement was signed to provide the operating system that became known as MS-DOS, for IBM's new personal computer.
Microsoft's Windows operating system is on more than 90% of the world's 1 billion or so personal computers, of which around 80% are powered by Intel chips.
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