Microsoft Company History – Microsoft Company About

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Microsoft Corporation is one of the largest software corporations in the world. The company’s divisions also make the Xbox family of game consoles, and more recently their own Surface tablets. Microsoft Company products are sold in more than 80 countries around the world, programs are translated into more than 45 languages.

History. Microsoft company begins its history in 1975, when fellow Harvard students Bill Gates and Paul Allen, having read an article in Popular Electronics magazine about the new personal computer Altair 8800, developed a Basic language interpreter for it. He became widely known and made a lot of money for his developers, which was the first step towards creating a corporation. The software was originally distributed on floppy disks for about $ 1.

Today, the corporation’s success is based on operating systems of the Windows family, including the Windows Phone mobile OS, as well as on Microsoft Office programs. During the existence of the company, several versions of graphical shells for MS-DOS have been released – from Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.x; operating systems that inherited compatibility with MS-DOS – Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME; as well as stand-alone operating systems of the NT family: Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5.0), Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7. Microsoft also offers server programs sold under the name Microsoft Servers.

In October 2012, Microsoft introduced the new Windows 8 operating system. The OS will help lay the groundwork for Windows Phone 8, which is expected to be released in November. The corporation founder Bill Gates said that the code exchange between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 is just the beginning of a long-term plan to merge the two client systems into one universal operating system. Bill Gates admitted that the mobile OS market is now largely occupied by Android and iOS, however, according to him, the new releases from Microsoft are attracting no less attention from both consumers and journalists.

Until 2011, Microsoft’s largest acquisition of online advertising corporation aQuantive was the largest acquisition deal. Microsoft is interested in buying up promising software companies. In particular, as a result of the acquisition of the companies Navision, Solomon, Great Plains, a new large direction of Microsoft Dynamics appeared in the assortment of Microsoft.

In May 2011, the corporation announced the purchase of Skype Limited, a company specializing in Internet telephony, for $ 8.5 billion. After the end of the acquisition, the Microsoft Skype Division was created on the basis of Skype Limited, with the director of Skype Tony Bates remaining its head.

In early September 2013, Microsoft announced the purchase from Finnish Nokia of its Devices & Services mobile phone manufacturing and service division for 5.44 billion euros. According to analysts, in a similar way, Microsoft, combining the development of mobile devices and software filling for them, will try to fight with Apple. On November 19, 2013, Nokia’s shareholders meeting approved the deal. The deal was closed on April 25, 2014.

In September 2014, Microsoft acquired the Swedish Minecraft company Mojang AB.

In January 2018, Microsoft announced the purchase of PlayFab, a backend service provider for creating and running cloud-based games. The services of the company are used by more than 3 thousand studios, it can be found in more than 1.2 thousand active games reaching about 700 million people. Notable clients: Disney, Rovio and Atari.

Notable titles include Idle Miner Tycoon, Angry Birds Seasons and Roller Coaster Tycoon Touch. That same year, Microsoft bought GitHub for $ 7.5 billion, the world’s largest source code hosting and collaborative development service.

On January 16, 2018, Microsoft closes free updates for Windows 8.1 with the transition to Windows 10. Now Windows 8.1 will not receive any significant improvements and bug fixes – only patches against vulnerabilities that will be released for another five years, until 2023.

Owners. Microsoft company shares are distributed as follows: Bill Gates owns 7.55%, Steve Ballmer owns 4.66%, other managers of the corporation account for less than a percent, the rest of the securities are in free float on the NASDAQ stock exchange (ticker MSFT).