That's just silly. IBM opening up their architecture (unlike Apple) created the PC market. Microsoft just squeezed profit off of every sale.
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When did IBM open up their architecture? They had an open architecture for the purpose of encouraging peripherals and software, not for the purpose of making cheap clones. The original PC BIOS had to be reverse engineered.
I could be wrong here but it's my understanding that the PC clone market was an unintended consequence of 1) doing the job in a hasty slapdash way with off-the-shelf components 2) handing control of the OS to a third party, namely Microsoft, without an exclusive license. IBM had just one tiny bit of proprietary knowledge, the BIOS, and once that was out of control, the PC clone market was up and running.
There was a time when Microsoft was the promethean hero bringing computing power to the masses. They really earned their dominant position back then, compared to how closed IBM and Apple were. Granted, the architecture and software were crap compared to many of their competitors, but Gates correctly analyzed that having the most open platform would eventually solve those problems.
Thanks, Neil. You're right. (My memory is rough.) I still would call the success of the PC an accident by IBM. Microsoft's position was to make as much money as possible by licensing it wherever it could, but I can see better now that they did play a very important role.