Is Microsoft forcing Vista on users?
- added August 19, 2008
- 0 responses
Microsoft Corp, the world’s largest software maker, is being probed by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission after an activist group filed a complaint saying consumers are being forced to buy its Windows Vista operating system.
“We have received the complaint and are now conducting our own investigation, which may last around six months,” Chou Ya- shu, the antitrust regulator’s spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview.
Microsoft can face fines of as much as NT$25 million ($796,000) and be ordered to halt illicit practices if found guilty of fair-trade breaches, she said.
Sophia Chang, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Taipei, denied the company forces people to buy Vista and declined to comment further on the case.
Microsoft should be fined for using its monopoly to force consumers to adopt Vista after the company ended sales of Windows XP in June, Taiwan’s Consumer Foundation, a non-profit group, said in its complaint posted on its Website.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, stopped selling XP individually and pre-installing the operating system in most computers in June to spur Vista sales.
Vista, which was released for consumers in January last year, requires more memory capacity and greater processing power than XP.
“It would be a very unusual and creative interpretation of antitrust law to say that a company is obliged to keep selling a product,” said Brendon Carr, an attorney who advises multinational companies on antitrust issues at the law firm Hwang Mok Park in Seoul.
“We have received the complaint and are now conducting our own investigation, which may last around six months,” Chou Ya- shu, the antitrust regulator’s spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview.
Microsoft can face fines of as much as NT$25 million ($796,000) and be ordered to halt illicit practices if found guilty of fair-trade breaches, she said.
Sophia Chang, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Taipei, denied the company forces people to buy Vista and declined to comment further on the case.
Microsoft should be fined for using its monopoly to force consumers to adopt Vista after the company ended sales of Windows XP in June, Taiwan’s Consumer Foundation, a non-profit group, said in its complaint posted on its Website.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, stopped selling XP individually and pre-installing the operating system in most computers in June to spur Vista sales.
Vista, which was released for consumers in January last year, requires more memory capacity and greater processing power than XP.
“It would be a very unusual and creative interpretation of antitrust law to say that a company is obliged to keep selling a product,” said Brendon Carr, an attorney who advises multinational companies on antitrust issues at the law firm Hwang Mok Park in Seoul.
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