EU Considering Another MS Antitrust Suit

mesozoic writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that the European Union is considering *another* antitrust suit against Microsoft, this time having to do with anticompetitive behavior in the market for mobile phone software. While I haven't seen any signs Microsoft is going to dominate the industry here in the States, cell phones are a much bigger deal in Europe, so I can understand why they'd be nervous."

Comments

Re:why waste the money?

[parnold]

the point is that you can't boycott a monoploy. if microsoft gains market dominance in mobile phones there shall be no choice. unlike pc's its quite hard to change the software on your phone. a antitrust cast may be the only way to stop this.

Re:Microsoft monopolizing AGAIN...

[cstrommen]

I can't speak for the others, but Nokia isn't using Microsoft's os as they have their own (Symbian) and it seems that most phone-providers are actually switching to this one. Sendo is a good example of this, as told in a previous slashdot story.

The companies that have been using the Windows Smartphone, now known as Windows CE .NET as far as I can tell, have reported a lot of serious problems with the os. It constantly crashes and freezes (no, this is not a joke nor a flame, this is a fact), something that is driving more and more of them over to the Symbian OS.

To conclude, there are many companies that have decided to use the Microsoft alternative, but more and more of these are ditching it in favour of the more commonly used Nokia os.

Eu law is different than the US antitrust law.

[miffo.swe]

In the US its ok to use and abuse a monopoly if it doesnt hurt the comsumer. The law doesnt take other companies in account that may be killed off by abusive monopolies.

Eu law in the other hand is all about keeping a level playing field among the companies themselves. Microsoft has more to fear from that law. Many European companies have been slapped with very big fines for much smaller offences than MS have made.

Then again i dont know if we should worry. All MS can succed in if they continue alienating their customers and locking people into Windows etc. is a total fork of the internet. Geeks on one side on open systems and Windows users locked into MSN and NET servers. I dont know if that should be so bad. I could live with it but could MS?