To: Jon Shirly
From: Scott Oki
DATE: 23 January 1985
RE: OEM Price List
Cc: Bill Gates; Steve Baller; Jim Harris; Carl Stock; Bob O'Rear; Ron Hosogi
There are two major areas of concern: MS_DOS pricing and GW-BASIC
pricing. As I interpret the price list, we have significantly increaced
the royalties for DOS and have significantly decreased the price for
GW-BASIC Interpreter. If we combine the price for the two products,
there is very little total change for an OEM who elects to license both
products. I assume the undrlying reason for changing the prices in such
a manner is two fold: 1) OEM's are resisting the high royalties for
GW-BASIC Interpreter and are deciding more and more frequently not to
license on a per system basis; and 2) we feel that our market strength
for MS-DOS is sufficient to charge prices that are 300% higher than
previously.
..
For MS-DOS, OEMs will view increasing our prices by 300% as pure linacy
and extremely rude. I believe that it would polarize our OEMs to license
Concurrent PC-DOS from DRI. Therefore, I recommend strongly that prices
for MS-DOS 2.x and 3.x remain unchanged from version 6.0.
For MS-DOS 4.0, I think we have an oppurtunity to raise our prices. This
would be justified on the basis of having a superior product compared to
Concurrent (I hope this iws tru by the time 4.0 ships).
http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/5000/PX05003.pdf
--
court documents in the case of Comes v Microsoft.
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