The Future Of Microsoft
The Future of Microsoft
Microsoft has a reputation for being the bully in the playground. Using questionable business practices, its undoubted muscle and a great deal of money, it aggressively goes after any other company it sees as a threat, either driving them out of business or acquiring them as part of the Microsoft empire. But now it appears that things may be falling apart. This paper considers Microsoft and what the future holds for the technology giant, who its competitors are, and even whether or not it will survive.
There's no doubt that Microsoft is the leading technology company in the world. There's also no doubt that the company is not performing as it has in the past. For example, during the 1990s its revenues grew by an average of 36%, but now growth has slowed to single-digits (Greene et al, 2004). It hasn't released a major update on any of its products for five years; it hasn't made headway into newer markets; and its stock is still trading where it was in mid-1998 (Greene et al, 2004). Although Microsoft is still the second highest-valued company in the world (after General Electric) it isn't performing as well as it once did; in addition its growth is "tepid," it seems unable to expand, it is riddled with bureaucracy and despite having seemed so intimidating that "it attracted antitrust suits on two continents" it also seems vulnerable (Greene et al, 2004). And its competitors are apparently aware of this vulnerability.
Its most serious threat seems to be from Linux, which is of course the "software dubbed 'open source' because the code is shared freely by developers around the world" (Greene et al, 2004). Governments from Finland to China are supporting Linux (which is known to be bug-free, as opposed to Microsoft's notoriously buggy software), with the result that Linux "has become so popular that it's challenging Microsoft's core business as no rival ever has" (Greene et al, 2004). In...
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