Reality was more that MS /benefited/ from the IBM-PC clone market rather than MS /caused/ the IBM-PC clone market.
IBM gets some credit, for making the IBM-PC with commodity components, which set the stage. But it was the clone makers (with Compaq being first, but certainly not last) that ultimately caused the standardization around the IBM-PC style systems. And the clone makers were driven by the fact that, at the time, the market (esp. businesses supplying their users) wanted to be compatible with the IBM-PC, while saving costs over buying an actual IBM-PC from IBM. MS benefited from the explosion in sales of IBM-PC clones by being the OS provider for the IBM-PC, so as a clone maker, to be fully compatible, you also needed MS's OS on your clone.
The standardization process occurred some years later once the market had clearly moved towards the IBM-PC architecture. And MS likely had some hand in guiding that process, given their monopoly at that time in the OS that every clone maker wanted to use. But by the time MS was powerful enough to begin any guiding (or "forcing") the market itself had already "standardized" because of the huge sales potential of being "IBM compatible".
IBM gets some credit, for making the IBM-PC with commodity components, which set the stage. But it was the clone makers (with Compaq being first, but certainly not last) that ultimately caused the standardization around the IBM-PC style systems. And the clone makers were driven by the fact that, at the time, the market (esp. businesses supplying their users) wanted to be compatible with the IBM-PC, while saving costs over buying an actual IBM-PC from IBM. MS benefited from the explosion in sales of IBM-PC clones by being the OS provider for the IBM-PC, so as a clone maker, to be fully compatible, you also needed MS's OS on your clone.
The standardization process occurred some years later once the market had clearly moved towards the IBM-PC architecture. And MS likely had some hand in guiding that process, given their monopoly at that time in the OS that every clone maker wanted to use. But by the time MS was powerful enough to begin any guiding (or "forcing") the market itself had already "standardized" because of the huge sales potential of being "IBM compatible".