Page "Wintel" Paragraph 19

Microsoft fared better.

In 1990, Microsoft had two competitors in its core market ( Digital Research and IBM ), Intel had none.

By 1996, Intel had two competitors in its core market ( CPUs ), while Microsoft had none.

Microsoft had pursued a policy of insisting on per-processor royalties, thus making competing operating systems unattractive to computer manufacturers and provoking regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission and US authorities, leading to an undertaking by Microsoft to cease such practices.

However, the integration of DOS into Windows 95 was the masterstroke: not only were the other operating system vendors frozen out, Microsoft could now require computer manufacturers to comply with its demands on pain of higher prices ( as when it required IBM to stop actively marketing OS / 2 or else pay more than twice as much for Windows 95 as its competitor Compaq ) or by withholding " Designed for Windows 95 " endorsement ( which was regarded as an essential hardware marketing tool ).

Microsoft was also able to require that free publicity be given over to them by hardware makers.

( For example, the Windows key advertising symbols on all modern keyboards, or the strict license restrictions on what may or may not be displayed during system boot and on the Windows desktop.

) Also, Microsoft was able to take over most of the networking market ( formerly the domain of Lantastic and Novell ) with Windows NT, and the business application market ( formerly led by Lotus and WordPerfect ) with Microsoft Office.