Sure!

Here’s more relatable analogy. Microsoft Office costs about $30/month per user for companies. For our example imagine Google Workspace doesn’t exist. So the “default” office software of MS Office that nearly everyone uses is not cheap, but not expensive. Further, you don’t buy MS Office from Microsoft directly, but through a partner that gives you other discounts and support. Now imagine that overnight Microsoft decides they’re desolving their partner network and you have to buy MS Office directly from Microsoft and also starting tomorrow that MS Office now costs ten times as much at $300/month per user. Would everyone stop using MS Office? Eventually, but you’ve got business you need to do today. Your company can’t even send email without Outlook, which is part of MS Office. So your company is BLEEDING money just paying for MS Office, and there’s no good alternative. So you pay it for now. You try desperately to come up with a plan to use something else, but for now you’re paying through the nose. Companies will take years to identify another product that replaces everything in the company that MS Office is used for and training the entire company to use and support this new product.

Replace the name Microsoft with Broadcom. Replace the name MS Office with VMware. This is what is happening and Broadcom is laughing all the way to the bank.

A big part of Broadcom’s current business model seems to be:

• Buy company that makes an important product/service used by many big companies.
• Squeeze the acquired company for every last drop of short term profit; increasing prices, abandoning products, etc.
• Watch large companies jump ship to other solutions
• Repeat