Comment by panick21_

This is a massive oversimplification of the Windows and OS/2 story. Anybody that has studied this understands that it wasn't just marketing. I can't actually believe that anybody who has read deeply about this believes it was just marketing.

And its also a cherry picked example. There are so many counter-examples, how Sun out-competed HP, IBM, Appollo and DEC. Or how AMD in the last 10 years out-competed Intel, sure its all marketing. I could go on with 100s of examples just in computer history.

Marketing is clearly an important aspect in business, nobody denies that. But there are many other things that are important as well. You can have the best marketing in the world, if you fuck up your production and your supply chain, your company is toast. You can have the best marketing in the world, if your product sucks, people will reject it (see the Blackbarry Strom as an nice example). You can have the best marketing in the world, if your finance people fuck up, the company might go to shit anyway.

Anybody that reaches for simple explanations like 'marketing always wins' is just talking nonsense.