Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
It was certainly luck to begin with, but it was parleyed into much more. When your licensing agreement with the computer manufacturer states that they will pay will pay a royalty on every computer they sell, whether it has DOS or OS/2 (remember that one?), then the computer manufacturer would be stupid to not put DOS on the computer that they are paying a royalty for anyways.
It was certainly luck to begin with, but it was parleyed into much more. When your licensing agreement with the computer manufacturer states that they will pay will pay a royalty on every computer they sell, whether it has DOS or OS/2 (remember that one?), then the computer manufacturer would be stupid to not put DOS on the computer that they are paying a royalty for anyways.
The business deals that Microsoft made were very good for them and I can't pretend that luck had much to do with that. But otherwise, the development of IBM clones and Microsoft's freedom to capitalize upon their existence was rather lucky . . . though, then again, had they been less aggressive with their business deals when they encountered that situation, they probably would not have achieved the same level of success based on that luck. So, I guess you're right.