Microsoft is one of the world’s largest technology companies, and they have had many ups and downs over the years. What is Microsoft’s strategies at the business and corporate level to succeed in an ever-changing technological field? Who are Microsoft’s competitors and how do they shape their decisions? Microsoft’s continued success depends on how they interact with their competitors and how they plan on moving forward. Will they continue to succeed or is their recent success unsustainable and will they lag again?
Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800. Its aim was to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date and in June 2016 announced plans to acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.
Microsoft Case Analysis MGS 4999 Online Xu Wanxin/Estelle 0930872 2017/4/24 Introduction Apple and Microsoft have long been fierce competitors since the mid-1970. In the early period, Microsoft was the leader of PC industry. It has a huge customers base and about 90 percent of PCs run windows. While the Apple only took very few market shares, and near bankruptcy in 1997. However, the situation took a turn since 2000.
Microsoft is an American technology company which develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, system, consumer electronics, and services. In recent decade, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions to grow the company such as Mojang, aQuantive, Nokia, LinkedIn and lot of others. Some of them added valuable new business software to Microsoft's portfolio. Some of them also cause huge loss of Microsoft or some problems but not failure. Microsoft/Skype is one of that which also has some mistakes in acquisition.
Utilizing the identified strengths and opportunities First, Microsoft has the dominant brand image. Microsoft was named one of the world's best transnational workplaces in 2011. Besides that, Microsoft change the latest technology brand personality, so that children and young people can easily know how to use Windows. And their brand image makes everyone impressed. Whenever you talk about Microsoft, the Microsoft logo will emerge in your mind.
Microsoft also has a kind of matrix structure which works along with the flat structure. The matrix structure consist of project teams which is made up of workers with different areas of specialty from various functions of a business (BPP, 2004). The legal structure of Microsoft is Limited Liability Company because the company went public on March 13, 1986
Based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, the automaker was founded by Henry Ford, on June 16, 1903. Ford Motor Company would go on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, as well as being one of the few to survive the Great Depression. The largest family-controlled company in the world, the Ford Motor Company has been in continuous family control for over 110 years. Ford now encompasses two brands: Ford and Lincoln. Ford once owned 5 other luxury brands: Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Mercury.
This vision was before the internet became popular in 90s. (Anon., 2016.) Microsoft first main operating system was launched back in 1985 with the launch of windows 1.0. The launch of windows 95 in 1995 was one the main starting point for Microsoft towards the basic daily use and function of a word-processing program in computers at home and in the office. (Anon.,
The operation is done either as a franchise, affiliate or the company. Revenues are obtained from royalties, rent, and sales in the corporation. As at 2012, the company’s revenue was $27.5 billion with a profit of $5.5 billion. The present-day company dates its establishment to the inaugural of an authorized electronic Company by Czech American entrepreneur Sam Walton and controlled its world-wide growth. The corporation turns out to be listed on the public-stock marketplaces in 1965.
For this company they are working 57.148 employees and total equity in 2014 goes to 104.5 billion dollars. And this giant empire began in March 1995 as a research project.Another example is Mark Zuckenberg who created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room , with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University student Eduardo Saverin. Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004. The software of Facemash, the Facebook’s predecessor , opened on October 28,2003 is written by Zuckenberg, when he was in his second year of college. The website was set up as a type of