Success Story-Microsoft

Success story-MICROSOFT

Founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates in April 1975, Microsoft is an American multinational technology company.

How did it all start?

Paul Allen attended lakeside school (Seattle) where he met bill gates. Although Paul was 2 years ahead of Gates but still they became very good friends as they both shared an enthusiasm for computers.

They would skip classes and spent their time in the computer room.They also hacked the schools's computer and were caught as well.

College Dropouts:-

After graduating, Paul went to Washington state university.Where he studied for 2 years.

But after 2 years he dropped out to work as a programmer. He even convinced gates to drop out of Harvard university.

Traf o data:-

In 1970,Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed Traf-O-Data and sold a computer to the city of Seattle for counting city traffic.It read and analyzed data from traffic tapes, and imported it into a software they developed to print out the traffic charts.

They earned around 20000 dollars from it. In 1972 they used newly launched Intel 8008 processor , to automatically interpret the tapes and eliminate all the manual work but It just didn't work out.

But like many other failure stories, Traf-o-data played a role of sewing seed in their success.

Forming Microsoft:-

In 1974, they read an article about a computer Altair 8800 in the popular electronics magazine, which really excited them.They knew that they could improve its performance with basic language.

They contacted MITS, the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that they were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.

In fact, They did not have any written code.They worked day and night & developed the BASIC interpreter.

Within 2 months, Paul Allen and bill  Gates were able to demonstrate their program to MITS.

MITS also agreed to distribute and market the product under the name of Altair BASIC

 The Altair Basic deal inspired both of them to form their own software company. They founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Bill Gates as the first CEO.

They named their partnership Micro-Soft and a year later the hyphen was dropped, and on 26 November 1976 the trade name Microsoft was registered.

MS-Dos

In 1980, IBM contacted Microsoft to create an operating system for their new computer. This was a golden opportunity for bill and Allen.

They made a new OS named ms dos, and IBM wanted to buy the source code of ms-dos for 50000 dollars but bill was really smart businessman. instead he wanted IBM to pay licencing fee on every computer they sold with dos in it.

A lot of such companies also released their PC into market and Microsoft sold ms dos to them as well.

Ms-Windows 1.0 

with the increasing popularity of Microsoft, one company which was posing serious threats to Microsoft was apple.IN 1981, Apple invited Microsoft to help develop software for Macintosh computers.from here bill thought of making an OS with graphical interface.

He started marketing windows as very easy to use OS that would work all the computers compatible with ms-dos.

But in reality, they had no such project under development at that time.

After 2 years of announcement, Microsoft launched windows

One of the youngest Billionaires:-

By 1987, Bill gates became one of youngest billionaires of the world.

but in same year, IBM replaced the ms dos with their own operating system OS/2.

In 1990, Microsoft launched windows 3.0 and he reduced the prices of Microsoft products. due to this the OS/2 failed in the market and windows 3.0 became the most popular windows.

Reason behind Success of Microsoft:-

Often we see the success of the people or brand but it's the hard work and  planning that really pays off. Bill and Allen really worked hard especially in the initial days, which was the most crucial time for Microsoft.

Also having a clever businessman's mind and foreseeing the future technological changes and adapting according to the upcoming standards helped Microsoft stay in the game.

when it comes to desktops, Microsoft still dominates – Windows 10 is now on 400 million devices.And its highly likely that even in the upcoming days It will continue to be at this spot.The Success story of Microsoft windows , How it became numero uno in the plethora of operating systems out there, is Really inspiring.