Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. As of 2016[update], it is the world’s largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world’s most valuable companies. The word “Microsoft” is a portmanteau of “microcomputer” and “software”.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4th 1975 to develop BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800 microcomputers. Allen went on to develop a version for early IBM PCs which became MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), while Gates oversaw development of various programming languages including QuickBASIC, Visual Basic and C#. The company rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s followed by Microsoft Windows. This was achieved thanks in large part to an aggressive marketing campaign that positioned Windows as a graphical extension to MS-DOS rather than a competitor. All through this period Microsoft gained market share with every successive release of Windows; however it was not until 1995’s release of Windows 95 that they finally overtook Apple Macintosh as the most widely used GUI based operating system in North America. This coincided with a drop off in sales for Apple who had become complacent after years of dominating the GUI market. Following this success Microsoft released several more versions of Windows culminating in version 10 which was first made available free-of-charge to users running genuine copies older versions from July 29th 2015 onwards. In August 2016 they announced that due new security concerns related to WannaCry ransomware attack they would be permanently ending support for all but their latest releases going forward; currently supported versions include 7 SP1 (with extended support until January 2020), 8.1 (January 2023) and 10 (October 2025).
Outside their dominant desktop OS franchise Microsoft has also been very successful with other products. In 1980 they entered into an agreement with IBM allowing them to sell PC DOS (which later became simply DOS) separately from any IBM computers; this arrangement proved highly lucrative as DOS became popular on non-IBM compatible clones. They followed this up by releasing various enterprise level server applications such as Exchange Server, SQL Server Sharepoint Server and Dynamics CRM. Alongside these they have also produced many consumer focused applications such as Hotmail (now Outlook.com), Skype,, Bing Search Engine, MSN portal, Cortana virtual assistant, .NET Framework programming platform, XBOX Live gaming service, OneDrive cloud storage service and Azure cloud computing platform.In recent years under CEO Satya Nadella there has been increased focus on artificial intelligence,IoT and quantum computing . Currently around 90% percent revenue still comes from traditional desktop/laptop sales & services though so it remains to be seen how successfully these initiatives will be able translate into future growth.