SAP Europe head says Microsoft ruling misplaced

A senior official of German software group SAP said on Saturday he believed the court antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. was misplaced, and that only a handful of Internet firms would survive in the next 10 years.

Shares in SAP were dented by the ruling last week by a U.S. federal court judge that software giant Microsoft had abused its dominant market position to squeeze competitors, such as in the market for Web browsers to peruse the Internet. Leo Apotheker, chairman of SAP Europe, said in an interview with French Radio Classique broadcast, that ruling against Microsoft meant ruling against one of the few standards in the IT industry. "Microsoft is a de facto standard. It's an advantage for the consumer to have a standard, even if it's a de facto one," he said. -- Reuters