Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation (/ˈmaɪkrəˌsɒft/,[2][3] abbreviated as MS) 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, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2016, it is the world's largest software maker by revenue,[4] and one of the world's most valuable companies.[5] The word "Microsoft" is a portmanteau of "microcomputer" and "software".[6]

Microsoft Corporation

Building 17 on the Microsoft Redmond campus in Redmond, Washington
Type
Public
Traded as
NASDAQ: MSFT
NASDAQ-100 component
DJIA component
S&P 100 component
S&P 500 component
ISIN US5949181045
Industry
Software industry
Computer hardware
Consumer electronics
Founded April 4, 1975; 42 years ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Founders
Bill Gates
Paul Allen
Headquarters Microsoft Redmond campus, Redmond, Washington, U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
John W. Thompson (Chairman)
Brad Smith (President)
Satya Nadella (CEO)
Bill Gates (Technical advisor)
Products
Windows Office Servers Skype Visual Studio Dynamics Xbox Surface Mobile more...
Services
Azure Bing LinkedIn MSDN Office 365 OneDrive Outlook.com TechNet Wallet Windows Store Windows Update Xbox Live
Revenue US$85.32 billion[1] (2016)
Operating income
US$19.86 billion[1] (2016)
Net income
US$16.79 billion[1] (2016)
Total assets US$193.69 billion[1] (2016)
Total equity US$71.99 billion[1] (2016)
Number of employees
114,000[1] (2016)
Subsidiaries List of Microsoft subsidiaries
Website microsoft.com
Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions—their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016,[7] followed by Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.[8]

As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC-compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android.[9] The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure) and software development (Visual Studio).

Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000, and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy.[10] This began with the acquisition of Danger Inc. in 2008,[11] entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers; and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999.[12][13]