SWOT Analysis of Microsoft

Microsoft Strengths

• Applications and operations capacity forth with afresh created online account arrangement capacity (MSN)
• Flexible workforce through accidental workers for seasonal/cyclical projects
• Loyal, hardworking, and assorted workforce (20% minority, 26% women) who, in accession to acceptable compensation, accept an befalling to do able-bodied financially through banal purchases
• Multinational association operating through bounded subsidiaries to abbreviate cultural differences in added than 60 countries
• New product, Neptune , is a Window's interface and is an archetype of acute software
• Relatively accelerated artefact development processes that acquiesce for appropriate afterlight and absolution of new products
• Revenues and profits ascent at 30% a year with merger/acquisition or investment in 92 companies over accomplished 5 years
• Software articles accept top name recognition, broad-based accumulated and customer accepting (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access), and abundant able appearance that are in use worldwide, thereby announcement acclimation and aggressive advantage through their affluence of affiliation and cost-effectiveness
• Top appraisement from Fortune for best aggregation to plan at and a lot of admired company
• Windows 95, 98, 2000 series, and Windows NT are globally accepted as the PC desktop operating arrangement with a bazaar allotment of about 88%
• World's better software aggregation with all-around name accepting and able acceptability for avant-garde products

Microsoft Weaknesses

• Between 1990-1995, Microsoft administration bootless to accurately ahead the advance or acceptance of the Internet
• Bill Gates has become Microsoft's arch software artist but has not yet developed a essentially new band of products
• Dependency on accouterments manufacturers to pre-install Microsoft's PC operating system
• Downside of artefact launches and deadlines contributes essentially to agent burnout
• Agent about-face has added from 6% for a ten year aeon to 7.4%
• Falling sales in the operating systems and server software sectors
• Frequent reorganization, red tape, and absolute atmosphere bedew agent adroitness arch to a accident of key cadre and air-conditioned of advice and innovation; 5-layers of management
• IRS audits in 1989 and 1990 appear appliance cachet of accidental workers for whom Microsoft did not abstain taxes nor acquiesce to participate in Microsoft's Savings Plus Plan or Agent Banal Purchase Plan, arch to a award of tax accountability for Microsoft in the "permatemps" Vizcaino litigation
• Little or no cogent attendance in the wireless bazaar and Windows CE has been disappointing
• Not a key amateur in the Internet amplitude and few articles for Internet applications
• Perceived by abounding as a cut-throat adversary that uses its ascendant bazaar position to marginalize antagonism by stealing/destroying the competition's products, airless artefact innovation, and abbreviating the availability of adversary products
• Articles accept a individual appliance focus and do not plan able-bodied with or on-top of added products
• Acceptability has suffered because of affair in antitrust and "permatemps" Vizcaino litigation

Microsoft Opportunities

• Cheaper all-around telecommunication costs accessible new markets as humans affix to the Internet
• Federal balloon Judge Thomas P. Jackson's aperture of administrative acumen and conduct in the Microsoft antitrust case atramentous the affairs in Microsoft's favor
• Adaptable buzz applications and corruption of claimed agenda administration represent a advance industry so that cardinal alliances could accommodate Microsoft with befalling in a bazaar area it currently has little or no cogent presence
• Acceptance a part of humans for Internet access
• The address for claimed computers in American and all-around markets charcoal able admitting the advance and accretion acceptance of claimed handheld devices

Microsoft Threats

• Apple and Linux abuse Microsoft's 88% bazaar allotment of the desktop operating market
• Between 1993-95, Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Oracle, IBM, AOL, and added companies confused into the Internet amplitude and authentic it while Microsoft bootless to ahead its advance or popularity
• Currency barter ante affect address for application/operation software and hardware, and clashing currencies can abnormally appulse revenues in the all-around marketplace
• Department of Justice antitrust action and accepted address creates ambiguity a part of advisers back its aftereffect is not known
• Accouterments manufacturers (Sun Microsystems, Oracle, IBM) accept collaborated on new belvedere technologies that carbon abundant of the amount of Windows
• Accouterments manufacturers (Sun Microsystems, Oracle, IBM, AOL, and Apple) are arising their own pre-bundled programs on their own hardware
• Linux admission growing from 7% in 1998 to 17% in 1999
• Claimed computers, mobile-phones, claimed chiffre assistants, entertainment-oriented hand-held computers, and agnate wireless articles for Internet admission do not crave Window operating arrangement products
• Accelerated development of adaptable accessories that will displace/replace claimed computers
• Recession or bread-and-butter arrest in the U.S. or all-around bazaar impacts claimed computer accessories sales and their charge for an operating systems
• Software piracy of bartering and customer applications software on a all-around calibration threatens acquirement streams
• Technology activity aeon is beneath and shorter
• Unix dominates high-end mission-critical applications and its barter do not accept Windows can handle these operations