Essay Example on Microsoft Corporation: Pioneering Technology Since 1975

Introduction

Microsoft Corporation refers to an American multinational technology company. Its headquarters are based in Redmond, Washington. It manufactures, develops, supports, licenses, and sells computer software, personal computers, consumer electronics, and other related services. Microsoft Corporation was established by Paul Allen and Bill Gates in the year 1975 (Fairbank, 2019). The company has been at the forefront in offering a variety of products and services. Some of the common services offered by the company comprise a cloud-based solution that provides platforms, software, services, as well as content to the clients (Mark, 2019). Besides, Microsoft also offers solution support and consulting services. Despite the fact that the company might not be prevalent as had been the case, Microsoft still has commanded a large number of desktop computers and laptops that depend on Microsoft Windows software (Fairbank, 2019). Furthermore, the Microsoft Company has been the main target by campaigners, governments as well as other companies for making use of its size privileges to eradicate rival products and competitors. The main focus of this paper is to conduct an in-depth analysis of Microsoft Company based on internal and external factors as well as Porter's Five Forces.

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Situational Analysis

Brief Overview

Microsoft Company is a diversified corporation that offers numerous services and products. The company does well in the competitive market but experiences stiff competition in the critical technological sector (Mark, 2019). Initially, the company started by putting much focus on software development before diverting to other areas. The company has a stronger competitive advantage in the technology market. However, it still faces stiff competition from other firms such as Red Hat, which is another substantial distributor of open-source operating systems, for example, Linux (Mark, 2019). The competitive advantage of Microsoft is attributed to its strong mission and vision statement.

Mission and Vision Assessment

The mission statement of Microsoft is empowering all companies as well as individuals on the sphere to attain their best, whereas its vision statement is to provide support to individuals and businesses globally to find their potentials (Fairbank, 2019).

Microsoft Corporation Company takes advantage of the prevalence and dominance in technology market owing to the fact that its management is dedicated to shaping the team towards the fulfillment of the vision and mission statement of the company; this has made the company appear as a modern giant in the technological sector (Fairbank, 2019). The vision and mission statement of the company is clearly spelled and comprehensively answers any inquiries that any person would wish to know concerning the organization. Furthermore, the corporation's vision statement is a clear representation of the position as well as the future direction that the company targets to achieve (Mark, 2019). On the contrary, the mission statement provides the techniques as well as the approaches that the company intends to exploit so as to maximize its operations.

Internal Factor Analysis

Strengths

Development and Research. The majority of the software services and products of Microsoft Company are internally designed and developed because of a strong internal technical and development control over the company's products, which it uses as a competitive advantage. Pratap (2018) argued that the internal development of the company’s products and services has managed to offer it the freedom of deciding the enhancements as well as modifications that are basically the implementation priorities. Furthermore, the corporations protect its investments in intellectual property in several ways, like making sure that there is the enforcement of trademark, trade secret as well as copyright and some other forms of protection towards its business plans, software, hardware, as well as branding.

Moreover, Microsoft has been leading in pursuing patents in numerous technology-based companies and thus owns a portfolio of over 30,000 international as well as United States patent (Pratap, 2018). On the basis of the assessment of the company concerning its major trends in technology on long-term research as well as growth, there exists a substantial opportunity of propelling future growth in communication, entertainment, cloud computing, smart devices, and productivity. Besides the development activities of the company, it runs Microsoft Research, which is among the most established and largest computer science research organizations on the globe (Pratap, 2018). Major universities across the world collaborate with Microsoft Research to enhance the aspect of art in the field of computer science, therefore, developing a bright image the future renders in technology.

Good Distribution Channels. Microsoft creates a huge difference with other rival companies in the industry by making use of very strong channels of distribution to market its services and products. The company employs the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) distribution channel in which the manufacturing companies of the devices make use of the software package of Microsoft to market the products (Onnen, 2019). In this situation, Microsoft software is installed by the manufacturing company on the devices before they are sold by the OEM to the final consumers. An instance where a product of Microsoft is distributed by making use of OEM is the operating system of Windows.

Besides, the company also makes use of distributors and resellers as distribution marketing channels. A substantial amount of the distribution chain of Microsoft products solely deals with the main company itself (Onnen, 2019). In this scenario, Microsoft is the one guiding the distribution channels via their interactions to enhance the customer experience. Besides, Microsoft utilizes the internet as one of its main channels for marketing, where it sells its services and products to persons and offers services such as subscriptions to various users with Microsoft software (Fairbank, 2019). Employing internet in the marketing of products of Microsoft comes with a lot of advantages since it enables the company to promote its brand products by being visible on various social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram as well as Twitter. The good distribution channel of Microsoft Corporation is one of its main strengths as it makes the company gain a competitive advantage over its rivals.

Weaknesses

Security Faults. Microsoft Corporation has suffered a major setback on its reputation mainly because of the Windows Operating System (Zulkarnain et al., 2018). Windows Operating System, which is the main product of the company, has been subjected to intense criticism owing to its vulnerability to virus attack. Because of this, hackers take advantage of the windows vulnerabilities via injection as well as remotely running harmful malware on the system. Zulkarnain et al. (2018) argued that due to its vulnerabilities, hackers most hackers take advantage of flaws in Adobe Type 1 PostScript format by luring users open links or documents that have hidden malware that might, in turn, cause harm to the system. However, it is worth noting that the company is much informed of the flaws and has been working hard to have the problems solved.

External Factor Analysis

Opportunities

Rapid Development in Smartphone Markets. Smartphones have become essential components in the current society, even in hostile economies. The revolution of smartphones has reached every part of the globe, including developing countries (Zulkarnain et al., 2018). Owing to the penetrating effect of Microsoft, a potential business area should be offered by the revolution of mobile phones. Previously, Microsoft extended its genius software to phone manufacturing. With the experience as well as numerous lessons gained from the phone industry, it is prudent that Microsoft ventures into the smartphone business. Falaki et al. (2010) argued that there exist numerous user needs that are presented in the usage of mobile. Microsoft has, however, conducted intensive research on various manufacturers to take a keen understanding of user behaviors. Moreover, the company has well-funded as well as established research and development with the ability to impact innovation and research and bringing Microsoft into the form of diversity.

Growing Preference for Smartphones. According to Falaki et al. (2010), most people have been impressed by the adoption of smartphones over desktops computers. Despite this, the major critique of smartphones by most people comprise errors in typing as well as low readability. Nevertheless, most researchers have not considered exploring the strengths offered by various users on the usage of smartphones. Microsoft needs to, therefore, exploit this opportunity to explore the smartphone market and establish the scientific better ways of balancing the portability as well as the readability of the phones. Falaki et al. (2010) further argued that the preference of smartphones comes from educational and other user needs of most college students. Microsoft, therefore, needs to conduct in-depth research on the usage of smartphones for educational as well as other needs. The research concerning the usage of smartphones presents a better opportunity for the company to expand its sales.

Threats

Obsolescence of Computer Hardware. Technology is dynamic in nature. The technological landscape has endlessly been trying to reinvent itself; this can be witnessed in the changing nature of personal computer hardware (Zulkarnain et al., 2018). With the arrival of more sophisticated information storage and sharing devices, the old pars of the hardware become obsolete and thus rendered useless. For example, the introduction of cloud-based computing technology rendered devices such as DVD and floppy disks obsolete. To cope up with the dynamically chaining landscape, Microsoft needs to aim at jumping to an innovation journey; this is because the changing nature of hardware poses the risk of rendering the company obsolete as well (Zulkarnain et al., 2018). However, Microsoft has been able to handle the dynamics in the hardware via constant design efforts as well as research.

Stiff Competition. Windows appear to be doing well in cloud computing; this is after having appeared to win the cloud war with its close rival, Amazon, hence making it one of the most prevalent cloud supplier (Zulkarnain et al., 2018). Nonetheless, cloud services are considered as a green area in computing and software service delivery. Due to that, there must be stiff competition in the area. Software being one of the diversification areas by Microsoft, the high competition pressure poses a threat to the dominance of Microsoft in cloud computing. Some of the strongest competitors of Microsoft comprise IBM, Google, Amazon web services, Oracle, and Salesforce...