1 / 7

BIICL conference: The Microsoft Judgment Bundling

Explore the question of whether Microsoft's judgment bundling of Windows Media Player is a constraint on innovation, and the potential benefits and drawbacks of integration. Analyze market shares of media players and the use of multiple media players.

emmawallace
Download Presentation

BIICL conference: The Microsoft Judgment Bundling

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. BIICL conference: The Microsoft JudgmentBundling Dr Helen Jenkins, Managing Director September 25th 2007

  2. How many products? • WMP is well-integrated into the operating system, but is separate in a number of ways • stand-alone competitor products exist • Commission and Court conclude that there are two products and that they are tied Is this a constraint on innovation? • are there benefits from integration that will be reduced?

  3. Two-sided markets and consumer welfare What is normal competition? What enhances welfare? Commission’s view Alternative view Downloading is a barrier OEMs do not want to load multiple media players Content providers do not want to multi-format Single media player is more efficient? OEMs often happy to pre-load more and/or downloading is easy Costs more to multi-format, but critical mass of users is small Can sustain multiple media players, even if WMP is ubiquitous How should it be chosen? Relevant to consider if there is a foreclosing effect

  4. Market shares of media players(unique users) (%) Source: European Commission decision of 24.03.2004 relating to a proceeding under Article 82 of the EC Treaty. (Case COMP/C-3/37.792 Microsoft), data for years 1998–2002; WebSiteOptimization (2007), ‘Apple's iTunes Player Climbs Streaming Media Charts’, March, data for years 2003–07; and Oxera analysis.

  5. Use of multiple media players • according to Microsoft Fact Sheet (2006), significant increase in the number of media players pre-installed (in addition to WMP) • EU increased from 1.4 per user in 2004 to 3.2 in 2006 • USA increased from 3.2 per user in 2004 to 3.7 in 2006 • average number of media players per user increased from 2.1 in 2004 to 2.6 in 2006

  6. Streaming media player time per person (minutes) Source: WebSiteOptimization (2007), ‘Apple's iTunes Player Climbs Streaming Media Charts’, March, and Oxera analysis.

  7. www.oxera.com Contact: Dr Helen Jenkins +44 (0) 1865 253 035 helen.jenkins@oxera.com

More Related