Fifty years in the past, Invoice Gates and his childhood buddy Paul Allen based an organization known as “Micro-Delicate” in a strip mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Half a century later, the corporate has cemented its place amongst tech giants and ranks because the world’s second-largest firm. At present, the one firm with a better market cap is Apple, maker of the ever-present iPhone.
Whereas Microsoft is reflecting on its previous successes in honor of its 50-year anniversary this April, together with Gates sharing the company’s original source code, the tech big can also be hustling to safe its place among the many leaders of the artificial intelligence revolution. After largely lacking the boat on smartphones and the shift to cell units, Microsoft is hoping to keep away from a repeat of this error and as a substitute dominate the fields of cloud computing and generative AI.
Microsoft nonetheless dominates workplace software program and working methods
Microsoft’s Home windows working system — initially known as MS-DOS — runs nearly all of the world’s computer systems. The corporate additionally made a reputation for itself by dominating the workplace software program market, and it nonetheless reigns supreme right this moment.
As soon as obtainable on floppy disks after which CDs, the software program can now be downloaded on any gadget due to the ability of cloud computing. Though its most important competitor Google Docs is free for a lot of to make use of, Microsoft Workplace merchandise stay the usual for many places of work all over the world.
Makes an attempt to diversify weren’t all the time residence runs
The corporate has made strikes to diversify past workplace software program and working methods all through the years. For instance, Microsoft launched Xbox consoles in 2001, launched the Bing search engine in 2009, and purchased the LinkedIn social media web site in 2016.
Regardless of these strikes, Microsoft’s services usually lag behind its opponents. PlayStations outnumber Xboxes nearly two to 1, Google Search continues to dominate Bing, and different social media web sites like Fb, Instagram, and YouTube outperform LinkedIn.
Microsoft now bids on AI and cloud computing
Microsoft is now working arduous to future-proof its tech legacy by means of cloud computing and synthetic intelligence. Its cloud platform Microsoft Azure is at the moment the second-largest by market share, although Amazon Net Providers (AWS) nonetheless leads by a large margin, and Google Cloud can also be gaining in recognition.
The corporate has additionally made important strikes to strengthen its AI choices. It invested its first $1 billion in OpenAI again in 2019, and through the years has invested a complete of $14 billion. Microsoft has additionally developed its personal in-house AI tools, resembling Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Nonetheless, the tech big lacks its personal proprietary silicon chips and depends on different corporations to provide these important AI mannequin elements. It stays to be seen whether or not Microsoft’s different AI investments might be sufficient to uphold its legacy for one more 50 years — or if it can fall behind different AI companies.