el central processing chips or clones of the Intel chips. This characteristic within the PC sub-market is consistent with a pure competition at the level of computer system manufacture within the sub-market, although certainly not at the level of central processing chip manufacture for the industry.
Market conduct, as the term is used in this analysis, refers to developments within the industry during periods of significant economic adjustment, i.e., high price inflation, recession, and so forth. As the computer and peripherals industry has developed over the past 20 years, some degree of consolidation has occurred. This consolidation, however, has not been linked directly to adjustments within the general economy. The IBM decision in the late-1970s to open the technology of the PC sub-market to participation by others led to low barriers to entry that caused hundreds of participants to enter the market. Many of these firms could not compete, and eventually dropped out of the market. Overall, however, the PC sub-market benefited from the increased competition, and grew enormously. By contrast, Apple restricted the Apple sub-market through the exercise of proprietary rights over the technology on which he sub-market was based, and the Apple sub-market share of the total computer and peripherals market has steadily declined.
Within the PC sub-market, the high level of competition caused prices to trend steadily downward while the level of technological sophistication within the sub-market trended steadily upward (Niemond, 1995, p. 1074). By contrast, within the Apple sub-market the absence of competition, together with a steadily declining market share, placed upward pressures on prices. The Unix sub-market is characterized by some competi
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