Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational computer technology company that mainly develops computer software. The most famous among them is the Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office office suite software.
As early as 1975, Bill Gates and Paul co-founded Microsoft. It was the first to sell “Altair 8800” (contemporary microcomputer) and BASIC interpreter (carried in “Altair 8800”).
But for such a great company, I cannot record the development process in detail anyway. So I will record it as simple chronology below.
Simple Chronology
- In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul co-founded Microsoft.
- In 1980, the MS-DOS operating system was introduced in the middle of 1980, and then the Windows operating system was introduced to dominate the home computer operating system.
- In 1986, the initial public offering, and then the stock price continued to rise.
- In 1990, Microsoft launched the office suite Microsoft Office (such as Word, Excel).
- In 1995, entering the Internet market, Windows 95 comes with online services “MSN” and Internet Explorer.
- In 2000, Steve replaced Bill Gates as CEO.
- In 2001, Windows XP was released, which was the first operating system with products enabled.
- In 2004, the game console Xbox developed by Microsoft entered the game market dominated by Sony and Nintendo.
- In January 2007, Windows Vista was released.
- In 2008, the Windows Azure service platform was launched, which was the first step for Microsoft to enter the “cloud service” market.
- Windows 7 was released in 2009.
- In 2010, Windows Phone 7 was released. Windows Phone is a touch mobile device operating system, using Windows CE7 core. (Windows Phone 8 uses the same core as Windows 8.)
- Windows 8 was launched in 2012. In the same year, Microsoft Surface was published and launched. This “tablet computer” uses Windows 8 as its operating system. The sales volume is not ideal.
- In 2013, Windows 8.1 was launched. On September 3 of the same year, Microsoft acquired all the mobile phone business of Nokia Mobile for US$7.2 billion.
- In 2014, Satya Nadella became the CEO, downsizing the hardware scale and focusing on “cloud services”. In the same year, Microsoft acquired Swedish game developer Mojang, whose most classic game was Minecraft, with a purchase price of US$2.5 billion.
- In 2015, Microsoft lost its competitiveness in mobile operating systems under the competition between Android (Google) and iOS (Apple). Of course, the operating system market still maintains a leading position. In the same year, Microsoft simultaneously launched a new version of Office 2016 globally. In the same year, Microsoft released a new generation of Surface Pro products.
- In 2018, Microsoft surpassed Apple to become the most valuable company in the world.
- In April 2019, Microsoft had a market value of one trillion US dollars.