Antitrust laws do not identify exactly what the company’s market share should be in order to consider it a monopoly. Rather, the latter is determined on the basis of the amount of market power (Lande et al., 2019). Usually, businesses with a market share greater than 50% are accused of forming monopolies. However, sometimes, even companies that have less than 50% market share can be accused of this practice if they can dictate their ‘unfair’ terms to suppliers or customers (Lande et al., 2019). Thus, 92% of Microsoft’s share in the PC operating systems market would definitely be considered a monopoly and violate antitrust laws.
Anticompetitive tactics such as tying arrangements and refusals to make deals violate antitrust laws as they negatively affect fair competition in the market.
In this case, Microsoft is using its market power to affect business partners’ decision-making process. However, coercion is considered to undermine fair competition and, for this reason, is against antitrust laws.
To resolve that tying arrangement violates antitrust regulations, lawyers should examine whether tying is associated with better productivity or is essential for product functioning. If the latter conditions hold true, a company cannot be accused of unlawful actions. Similarly, if Microsoft can prove that the tying arrangement regarding Internet Explorer is either essential for Windows operational system operation or significantly increases productivity, it cannot be accused of antitrust laws violation.
Microsoft can market long-distance telephone services by showing the advantage of the Microsoft 365 integrated system to interact with both the service users and non-users. Moreover, it allows making calls with people who do not have or experience problems with internet connection quite easily. In this respect, it is necessary to emphasize the service’s flexibility and lower costs compared to the competitors.
Reference
Lande, B. J., Blumenfeld, I., Even-Chen, A., & Minster, M. (2019). Entities with relatively small market shares may also be deemed monopolies.JD Supra. Web.