MICROSOFT CORPORATION

Microsoft Corporation is a technology company. The Company develops, licenses, and supports a range
of software products, services and devices. The Company's segments include Productivity and Business
Processes, Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing. The Company's products include operating
systems; cross-device productivity applications; server applications; business solution applications;
desktop and server management tools; software development tools; video games, and training and
certification of computer system integrators and developers. It also designs, manufactures, and sells
devices, including personal computers (PCs), tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, phones, other
intelligent devices, and related accessories, that integrate with its cloud-based offerings. It offers an
array of services, including cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software, services,
platforms, and content, and it provides solution support and consulting services.

Microsoft Corporation, leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. The
company also publishes books and multimedia titles, produces its own line of hybrid tablet computers,
offers e-mail services, and sells electronic game systems and computer peripherals (input/output
devices). It has sales offices throughout the world. In addition to its main research and development
centre at its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, U.S., Microsoft operates research labs in
Cambridge, England (1997); Beijing, China (1998); Bengaluru, India (2005); Cambridge, Massachusetts
(2008); New York, New York (2012); and Montreal, Canada (2015).

Website: https://news.microsoft.com/

CONTACT:

 microsoft.com
 425-882-8080
 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052

Industries: Computer Software

Company size: 10,001+ employees

Headquarters: Redmond, Washington

Type: Public Company

Founded: 1975

Specialties

Business Software, Developer Tools, Home & Educational Software, Tablets, Search, Advertising, Servers,
Windows Operating System, Windows Applications & Platforms, Smartphones, Cloud Computing,
Quantum Computing, Future of Work, Productivity, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Laptops,
Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, Gaming, Developers, and IT Professional

ADDITIONIONAL DETAILS

Public Company

Incorporated: 1981 as Microsoft, Inc.

Employees: 56,104

Sales: $32.19 billion (2003)

Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ

Ticker Symbol: MSFT

NAIC: 511210 Software Publishers; 511130 Book Publishers; 334111 Electronic Computer
Manufacturing; 334119 Other Computer Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing; 423990 All Other
Durable Goods Merchant Wholesalers; 443120 Computer and Software Stores; 551112 Offices of Other
Holding Companies; 541613 Marketing Consulting Services; 541618 Other Management Consulting
Services

As a result, by the mid-1990s Microsoft, which became a publicly owned corporation in 1986, had
become one of the most powerful and profitable companies in American history. It consistently earned
profits of 25 cents on every sales dollar, an astonishing record. In the company’s 1996 fiscal year, it
topped $2 billion in net income for the first time, and its unbroken string of profits continued, even
during the Great Recession of 2007–09 (its net income had grown to more than $14 billion by fiscal
year 2009). However, its rapid growth in a fiercely competitive and fast-changing industry spawned
resentment and jealousy among rivals, some of whom complained that the company’s practices
violated U.S. laws against unfair competition. Microsoft and its defenders countered that, far from
stifling competition and technical innovation, its rise had encouraged both and that its software had
consistently become less expensive and more useful. A U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded
in 1994 with a settlement in which Microsoft changed some sales practices that the government
contended enabled the company to unfairly discourage OS customers from trying alternative programs.
The following year the Justice Department successfully challenged Microsoft’s proposed purchase of
Intuit Inc., then the leading maker of financial software for PCs.

2)
HISTORY

With annual revenues of more than $32 billion, Microsoft Corporation is more than the largest software
company in the world: it is a cultural phenomenon. The company's core business is based on developing,
manufacturing, and licensing software products, including operating systems, server applications,
business and consumer applications, and software development tools, as well as Internet software,
technologies, and services. Led by Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest individual and most famous
businessman, Microsoft has succeeded in placing at least one of its products on virtually every personal
computer in the world, setting industry standards and defining markets in the process.

In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul G. Allen, two boyhood friends from Seattle, converted BASIC, a popular
mainframe computer programming language, for use on an early personal computer (PC), the Altair.
Shortly afterward, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft, deriving the name from the words
microcomputer and software. During the next few years, they refined BASIC and developed other
programming languages. In 1980 International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) asked Microsoft to
produce the essential software, or operating system, for its first personal computer, the IBM PC.
Microsoft purchased an operating system from another company, modified it, and renamed it MS-DOS
(Microsoft Disk Operating System). MS-DOS was released with the IBM PC in 1981. Thereafter, most
manufacturers of personal computers licensed MS-DOS as their operating system, generating vast
revenues for Microsoft; by the early 1990s it had sold more than 100 million copies of the program and
defeated rival operating systems such as CP/M, which it displaced in the early 1980s, and later IBM
OS/2. Microsoft deepened its position in operating systems with Windows, a graphical user interface
whose third version, released in 1990, gained a wide following. By 1993, Windows 3.0 and its
subsequent versions were selling at a rate of one million copies per month, and nearly 90 percent of the
world’s PCs ran on a Microsoft operating system. In 1995 the company released Windows 95, which
for the first time fully integrated MS-DOS with Windows and effectively matched in ease of use Apple
Computer’s Mac OS. Microsoft also became the leader in productivity software such as word-
processing and spreadsheet programs, outdistancing longtime rivals Lotus and WordPerfect in the
process.

Microsoft dramatically expanded its electronic publishing division, created in 1985 and already notable
for the success of its multimedia encyclopaedia, Encarta. It also entered the information services and
entertainment industries with a wide range of products and services, most notably the Microsoft
Network and MSNBC (a joint venture with the National Broadcasting Company, a major American
television network, which began in 1995 and ended in 2012).

STRATEGY

In the past several years Microsoft has reoriented its products to the cloud, which has driven sales
higher. Microsoft's commercial cloud business, which includes Azure, Office 365 Commercial, the
commercial portion of LinkedIn, and Dynamics 365 accounted for more than 73% of the company's
revenue growth in 2018 and 2019. Revenue from the Azure cloud services business, which ranks second
in size only to Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services, jumped 64% in 2019 from 2018.

The company offers customers subscriptions to cloud-based versions of its familiar Office productivity
suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and other popular programs that fueled robust growth in 2018 and
2019.

In gaming, Microsoft is due to offer a new game-streaming service, Project xCloud, which will begin
public trials in late 2019. To furnish new games for its Xbox system, Microsoft has about doubled first-
party game studios through acquisitions for its subscription services like Xbox Game Pass.

The company might seem invulnerable, but Microsoft faces unrelenting competition throughout its
portfolio. Amazon, IBM, Google are top rivals in web services and Apple and Google compete in
operating systems and software. Those two companies also have thriving mobile phone businesses,
which Microsoft lacks. In gaming, Electronic Arts, Activision-Blizzard, and others offer blockbuster games
to players.

3.)

MISSION

Microsoft’s corporate mission is “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to
achieve more.” This mission statement shows that the business is all about empowerment of people
and organizations. Such empowerment is achieved through the utility of the company’s computing
products. The following components are significant in Microsoft’s corporate mission statement:

o Empowerment
o Every person and every organization on the planet
o To achieve more

The first component of the corporate mission shows what Microsoft’s products can do for customers.
For example, such empowerment can take the form of speedy data processing in offices and enhanced
information access in homes. The second component of the company’s mission statement specifies
the target market, which in this case involves all individuals and organizations worldwide. The
company’s corporate mission also specifies that its computer technology and software products
benefit customers in terms of achieving more. Microsoft’s corporate mission statement is similar to
the company’s vision statement, considering that both statements pertain to empowerment.
However, the corporate mission statement puts more emphasis on the practical benefit of achieving
more. This benefit or value is reflected in strategies and tactics included in Microsoft’s marketing mix
or 4P.
VISION

Microsoft’s corporate vision is “to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full
potential.” This vision statement shows that the company presents its business and computing
products as tools that people and business organizations can use for their development. Microsoft’s
corporate vision statement has the following components:

o People and businesses throughout the world

The first component of the vision statement partly defines Microsoft’s target market, which is the
global market. Instead of selling software products to individual customers only, the company also sells
its products to organizations. The second component of Microsoft’s corporate vision statement shows
what the business intends to do. For example, the company aims to provide products that assist
customers toward the achievement of their full potential, which is specified in the third component of
the corporate vision. Thus, Microsoft’s corporate vision presents the target market, what the
company’s technology products do, and what customers can achieve through such products.

Microsoft’s Corporate Vision & Corporate Mission – Recommendations

Microsoft’s mission statement presents the global market scope of the business and a general idea
about the benefit of the business to its customers. However, the corporate mission does not clearly
define the business in terms of its nature or what it does. Ideally, mission statements must provide a
general idea about the nature of the business and about what the organization wants to achieve. In this
case, Microsoft’s corporate mission needs improvement. A recommendation is to improve the
company’s mission statement by including how the organization achieves its corporate vision. For
example, in terms of growing its computer technology and software business, the corporation can
specify rapid innovation in computing networks and related products. Also, to improve the corporate
mission statement, information about Microsoft’s strategies may be included.

Microsoft’s vision statement shows the company’s target market and product value. However, the
corporate vision lacks details to effectively guide the organization’s development. Ideally, vision
statements must include details on a desired future situation of the organization. In Microsoft’s case,
the corporate vision does not contain such information. Thus, it is recommended that the company
revise its vision statement to include information about where the business is heading. For example,
Microsoft’s vision statement can present information about its target market leadership for a specific
set of computer technology and software products in the decades to come.