FC: Cato report disputes Judge Jackson's figures, from NYT

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/biztech/articles/28apps.html

Report Questions a Number in Microsoft Trial
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 27 --
How many applications dance on the head of a hard drive?

In his antitrust ruling against Microsoft,
federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
argued that a crucial barrier confronting the
company's potential competitors are the
70,000 programs written to run solely on
the Windows operating system.

The judge made his ruling, in April, based
on trial testimony about the number of
Windows programs -- testimony that was
not disputed by Microsoft. The judge
concluded that the vast library of
Windows-based programs discourage
competitors and make the possibility of
competing against Microsoft impractical.

At issue are so-called application
programs -- word processors,
spreadsheets, personal-finance
software and the like -- that run on top of
the Windows operating system.

But an economist who has surveyed the personal
computer software market contends that the 70,000
figure is grossly overstated. There are probably
fewer than 10,000 Windows programs in use today and most
users probably have no more than a handful on their computers,
according to the economist, Richard B. McKenzie, a conservative
scholar at the University of California at Irvine.

The lower figure indicates that Microsoft is not the impregnable fortress
depicted in the antitrust trial, Mr. McKenzie writes in a paper that
presents the results of his survey.

[...]




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