Microsoft The Reinvention Of The Tech Giant

As Microsoft changes its strategy and turns its attention to businesses and cloud computing, it has reported record growth and profits.

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Delve deeper into the giant’s checkered history, see how its cutting-edge hardware is causing Apple and Google to rethink their strategies, and explore what the future will bring for one of the world’s most iconic technology brands.

ALL CHANGE AT MICROSOFT

Over the past five years, Microsoft has gone through something of a revolution. Satya Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer as chief executive officer in 2014, at a time when the company was facing significant challenges. For the first time, Microsoft wasn’t a dominant player in the personal computing world, and whilst its market share remained strong, rivals Apple and Google were tightening their grip on customers and offering innovative products that took consumers away from the once ubiquitous Microsoft. The company also battled through the move from laptops and personal computers to smartphones and tablets, and its Windows Mobile product simply didn’t connect with customers in the way the firm had hoped.

Microsoft’s search engine Bing was also struggling, with the company spending hundreds of millions on securing deals to make the name prominent and claw market share from Google. By the end of 2014, the company’s market cap stood at $300 billion half of what the company was worth in 1999 and half of what it’s worth today - close to $800 billion with shares reaching a record $104.29 apiece in mid-2018.

As part of a reinvention programme, Nadella launched a series of initiatives to breathe life into the company’s flagging products and services and worked to reshape Microsoft’s culture. His first target was to prioritize cloud computing, with Microsoft Azure struggling to compete with Amazon Web Services. Just two years after his introduction at the company,