The biggest cross-sell ever

MicrosoftWindows XP`s launch was a most entertaining event. For those who didn`t attend the gathering at Monte Casino, you missed out on a spectacular light show, a woman dressed as a large arrow being lowered from the ceiling and jerked around the stage, and a very long demonstration of the multimedia capabilities of XP.

Microsoft`s moral obligation in a position of power is to not favour one partner over another for marketing reasons.

Jason Norwood-Young, Technology editor, ITWeb

What the show, and the advertising and promotion around the show, could have done without, was the distinct favouring of specific Microsoft partners, to the detriment of others. Intel seemed to get more out of Microsoft`s multibillion-rand campaign than Microsoft itself. The Pentium 4 logo sat in every print advert and had a prominent place in the presentation.

While AMD was invited to the party, no mention was made of the new Athlon, which has been named XP itself - supposedly for "extreme performance". I even hear that the local Microsoft representatives were a little embarrassed at sidelining AMD to such an extent, but instructions from on high, purportedly prompted by a donation to XP`s launch campaign, put Intel in the spotlight.

Microsoft clearly holds the prominent position in the market, and I believe that Windows XP will cement its position as it is clearly a good, user-friendly, robust operating system. Yet with such force in the marketplace come some responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is making sure you don`t stomp on market players that are trying to support you.

While SA does not have anti-monopoly legislation, and while Microsoft does not, to my knowledge, fall short in the anti-competitive legislation, its moral obligation in a position of power is to not favour one partner over another for marketing reasons. If AMD`s chips were inferior to Intel`s, Microsoft would be justified in its marginalisation of this partner. I do not believe this to be the case. AMD has clearly closed the gap with Intel and often outshines its large competitor.

Other software players that will take a knock from XP include Real Media (due to the packaging of Windows Media Player with the OS); Opera and Netscape, thanks to Microsoft`s continued insistence of including IE in Windows and even making its MSN pages IE-only for a short period; Sun Microsystems, since XP does not come with a Java virtual machine; and a host of niche software and service vendors that will be ousted by Microsoft`s Movie Maker, Instant Messenger, Hotmail integration, Outlook Express and MSN Explorer.

The link between Passport and Windows XP - encouraging users a little too strongly to sign up for Microsoft Passport (part of the Hailstorm project) - will threaten those who aren`t Microsoft competitors. Once this service gets into full swing, e-commerce providers not in the programme could be seriously marginalised, with XP users naturally preferring to transact with Passport-compliant vendors. Passport alone is probably the greatest medium- to long-term threat for Microsoft`s competitors, and sadly is also a threat to non-competitors - companies just trying to survive on the Internet.