Microsoft Econmic Down Turn 2009

Due to the recession the company is experiencing a decline in profits, however, the business remains profitable. Potentially, the recession could continue and business may decline further. A proactive plan is better than being reactive in regards to addressing the declining profits. Layoffs are the quickest and easiest solution to the issue.

Microsoft has their dominance of the industry at stake. They could potentially come out on top if left to continue their current tactics. They are masterfully “marketing their products” and it is paying off for them (Love, 1997).

They have expand their business from only on computer software and hardware to online search engine, home gaming devices and smartphone, those business are the popular business in the world, Microsoft is trying to adapt the new market.

One competitive strategy that Microsoft may consider would be lowering the price of the software. Microsoft’s current OS average cost is $200 but can be as high as six to seven hundred, while Apple currently offers theirs on average at about $50. Lowering the average cost of the OS could increase demand as well as sales (“Calibex”, 1999-2015).

Microsoft got so into the feel of being a monopoly that they stopped putting

In the last 10 years, Microsoft has had to make several changes to their benefit package in order attract and retain quality employees, guarantee the company’s long term success, and to more closely align the interests of the employees and shareholders (Microsoft). The first part of these changes came in 2003, when the company began offering Stock Awards. Employees are “awarded actual shares of stock as part of their compensation, rather than options to buy

New technology has lead to our customers handling their claims via the internet and by contacting our national call centres. Some areas of work have been contracted out to private industry in order to cut costs and provide a more bespoke service to customers. This has all resulted in a reduction of staff headcount in frontline offices and redeployment of employees to other departments or more recently the offer of redundancy packages.

Microsoft's stated mission statement is "to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential." Arguably, a statement this vague provides so little sense of mission that it lacks value. That is the point. Microsoft cannot even uphold its own mission internally, given the gap between the company's potential and the company's output. That the company has no coherent, tangible sense of its own mission is a contributing factor to that failure. Consider the company's resources. As Clarke (2010) notes, it is not for lack of ideas that Microsoft has failed to innovate. The company has great people, highly-talented, educated and experienced. It has $66 billion in cash on its balance sheet and another $10 billion in long-term investments (MSN Moneycentral, 2012). Clarke (2010) notes that the company spends $9 billion per year on research and development. The potential for innovation at Microsoft, then, is tremendous, yet its output is minimal.

Microsoft is a highly diversified company. Its technologically-related products span from software to music players to game consoles to web browsers to search engines to phones. However, its flagship product, the product which has been the primary driver of its profits has been Microsoft Windows, the ubiquitous operating system that runs on virtually every computer in the world. Windows has been deemed so critical that even Microsoft's competitor Apple was effectively forced by market pressures to allow its Macs to run Windows, in an effort to boost sales. "As astounding as Apple's success has been, it hasn't put a dent in the Microsoft Office monopoly. [Current CEO] Ballmer and company still profit on every Macbook running Word, Excel and PowerPoint" (Greg 2012).But while Microsoft continues to make its highly profitable Windows products (despite industry criticism about its user features); it has struggled to diversify in its many critical areas, most notable in its music, phones, and Internet service.

Microsoft had to split their operating system company from the rest of their organization. Another action Microsoft took was its relations with Java. They licensed a version of Java that worked mainly with windows where they tried to drive out the competitors and in later years they didn’t even allow Java to work with Windows XP (Rivkin 4). Microsoft tried to basically kill Java and with this the producers of Java sued Microsoft. Last, Microsoft took actions toward their competition in open-source software: Lunix. Microsoft responded by opening up into own server OS code like Lunix did. They actually sold stripped-down versions of the code to emerging economies and they also set up a lab that’s sole purpose was to find competitive weaknesses in the Lunix OS (Rivkin 5).

Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop

Microsoft Corporation is an American global technology firm develops, manufactures, and sells computer software, electronics, and personal computers. The firm has its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Bill Gates founded the corporation in 1975 to develop and sell necessary interpreters; it rose with time to become the dominant player in the computer operating system operating system it had its initial public offer (IPO) IN 1986. Its fast growth in the industry has enabled it to acquire Skype technologies in 2011 at the cost of $8.5 billion. The firm has plans to make more acquisitions this year. The profit margin of the company lies at US$16.79 billion.

The three statements that were provided in this section provide possible investors, competitors, and even those within the company with useful information to make important decisions that could affect their livelihood or the livelihood of Microsoft. Keep in mind that even though financial statements are a solid indicator of how a company is performing, one key principle about must be known when viewing them to make decisions. They do not always provide all of the information that you may need. There are usually underlying topics that could affect the company that are not necessarily showing up on their financial statements. These topics are discussed in other sections of this report on Microsoft.

in order to create possibly the most effective and versatile workforce of any corporation in existence. To study Microsoft's way of doing business is to look at the company from many angles, from a managerial and organizational standpoint to its process of developing products and services for its customers and its competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Microsoft from a strategic fit

Microsoft became the global leader of software services and internet technologies for the computing industry in the early 90’s. It provides wide range of products & services and is involved in developing manufacturing, licensing and supporting software support. Microsoft’s software product includes operating system, business solution aps, computer and server applications as well as software development tools. Microsoft offers different range of services from its five