You are unbelievable. You expect me to believe that you will call two different distribution methods of the same exact media "separate markets"
They're not just distribution methods of the same media. The definition of a market is fungibility. Digital music is sold and marketed separately, priced separately, and differs in the nature of the goods sold. A CD cannot be used everywhere a digital file can be used and vice versa. They don't report their revenues in the same category, and digital music stores and retailers for physical goods negotiate on different and separate terms. As a general rule, when an industry treats its categories separately, they fall under separate markets.
As an example: Coca-cola's bottling distribution is one market, while its fountain distribution is a separate market. It's the same "media" but not the same market. You can combine the two into an aggregate of markets, but that's for corporate- or industry-level comparison, and not for competition law.
Enterprise-class computer hardware isn't a part of the consumer market share reports. Windows doesn't have a 91% market share outside of consumer x86 hardware; Apple isn't in fifth place anywhere outside of consumer x86 hardware. They're both markets in the computer industry, and although you could use a server as your desktop, they're not fungible goods so they aren't part of the same market for competition law.
and yet people like you will not admit that hardware and software are separate markets.
Hardware and software are indeed separate markets. The fact that you can't even identify the moving parts of your own arguments is truly puzzling.
Apparently, what is and what is not a market depends completely on a person's opinion
No, it depends on fungibility. A digital file and a CD aren't interchangeable any more than a CD and a concert are interchangeable ways of listening to music.
Exactly what criteria do you use to determine what is and what is not a "market" ?
"Products that consumers will substitute for a given product in response to a 'small but significant and nontransitory' price increase when identifying the products that compete in an antitrust market" and/or "all producers that currently produce a relevant product and all producers that could easily and economically produce and sell the relevant product in a short period of time (e.g., one year) in response to a small but significant and nontransitory price increase."
In other words, fungibility.
You don't seem to have a CLUE what you're talking about. Apple is dabbling in TWO *SEPARATE* markets at the same time. The fact their operating system runs on their own hardware in no way makes it a single market, even when it was all PPC.
Here's the clue: you're the only one pushing the single market structure in your boneheaded attestations that there is no hardware competition with Apple.
The problem is that Apple is selling hardware that can run any OS you want on them (they even make it easy to install Windows with Boot Camp), but they are denying the competition the right to install their software (separate market) on their own hardware. Where is trade being restrained? HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. aren't allowed to compete on even terms
Apple has consumer operating system competitors--many of them, from Windows to Ubuntu to BSD, with new players like ChromeOS entering the mix. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. don't make operating systems for x86 consumer hardware.
Apple has intense hardware competition--its 8% hardware share is dwarfed by four competitors holding a combined 70+% of the market. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. compete on even terms with hardware.
What no one else offers is the combination of hardware and software, but that's not a market. That's an intersection of two markets. There is no requirement that a company release software developed for its own products to competitors. There is no requirement that features of products that could be sold separately actually
be sold separately. There is no right to mix and match hardware and operating systems. Microsoft built a business out of doing it, but they could just as easily entered the hardware market instead.
You're not talking about
competition. You're talking about,
instead of competing, letting someone else
sell something that a competitor made instead of making a better one themselves. If Dell wants something better than Windows, they are free to fund and develop it, and then they are free to put it on Dell hardware exclusively.
What you're advocating is indefensibly
anticompetitive: "when companies fail to compete, they should be rewarded with the government forcing their successful competitor to give them free access so that they too can sell the successful product instead of having to make a better one, having borne none of the costs and none of the risk." It's utterly ludicrous.
You want to talk about separate markets? Then do so. The x86 consumer operating system market competitor is Microsoft. They're doing fine. The x86 consumer hardware market chief competitors are HP, Dell, and Acer, and they're doing fine, too. Neither market is restrained by Apple's decision not to license their OS to other vendors. If HP wants to boost sales of its hardware with a superior OS, no one's stopping them from developing one or from limiting it to HP computers.
I've now said this more times than I can count on here. The logic is flawless.
Your logic is baseless, as it has always been, and as it always will be. You've never attempted to educate yourself, and it is clear you never will.
Indeed it is, but in perfect contrast to your claims.
NONE of those software systems are sold publicly at retail outlets like OSX is.
Actually, they all are, and updates, free or fee, are publicly available, too.
None of those systems will run on vanilla clone hardware either so your comparison is just plain IGNORANT.
Actually, they all will. There's nothing special about Palm hardware that webOS wouldn't run on an HTC. HP-UX runs on processors made by other companies. Ford Sync is based on ARM and Windows CE--the same hardware that underlies almost all in-car systems, and software that is used by several manufacturers. You're digging quite the hole for yourself.
I'll say it again: put up or shut up. I look forward to your reporting back with a case number so we can all watch your vindication.