Microsoft Business

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Microsoft
Microsoft is a computer software development company that was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates in April 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Initially, the two partners created a program that monitors traffic patterns in Seattle during the early 1970s (Woodford 8). Allen left the company in 1983 after he was diagnosed with cancer. The main product is the Microsoft operating system software which was publicly released in 1980 which was a Unix version called Xenix. It was also used as the basis of the company’s word process (Woodford 8). The windows operating system was released in 1985 which has a new user interface while supporting multitasking activities. Its software is used in computers worldwide.
The name Microsoft is derived from the word software and microcomputer. Microsoft went public in 1986 and broke in the fortune 500 list in 1995, which was twenty years since its founding. Its highest ranking in the list was at number 34 (Kumar 240). Microsoft has over 132,000 employees, with its headquarters located in Redmond, Washington DC. The company licensed MS-DOS, its first operating system to IBM for a personal computer that was released in 1981 (Woodford 8). The company is involved in different industries and provides various services. It is behind the Windows OS that is used in personal computers (Protalinski). The company also has an electronic game console called Xbox that was launched in 2001 and also released windows mobile OS that was used in smartphones from various companies like Samsung, Motorola, LG, Nokia, and HTC. The company also provides a wide array of service, including email, search engines, and cloud storage.
Microsoft has been a dominant company in the operating system market even though it has several prominent competitors since it is a diversified firm. Some of the company’s largest competitors are in the software industry and include Oracle which provides services in the cloud and database markets (Woodford 9). It directly competes with Microsoft's products such as Access. Other competitors include Red Hat which distributes Linux and other open-source operating systems. Another major competitor is Google, which directly competes with Microsoft search, Bing and also its cloud storage services. The company's software products like Office 365 are also competing with services like Google Docs which offers similar software (Woodford 8). Apple is also a major competitor in the smartphone market, and Microsoft has fallen behind when it comes to mobile devices. However, Gates’ vision and foresight for personal computing have been vital for the success of the company and the software industry.
Impact of Microsoft on the World Economy
Microsoft has established offices in over 108 countries, and its global revenues in 2019 were $33 billion, which was $3 billion higher in comparison to the previous year (Protalinski). The company serves a large number of customers and it also works with many partners in collaborative efforts to develop and maximize the benefits of its software (Microsoft). The software is used by different businesses and governments and has been integral in working as a catalyst for economic dev...