Bill Gates & Paul Allen of Microsoft

Gaining acceptance for BASIC and using that as a springboard to writing one of three operating systems for IBM's personal computer proved the company's most successful points during the early years. With IBM, Microsoft focused on gaining acceptance for its operating system at the expense of other operating systems, and their strategy worked to the point that the Microsoft operating system (MS-DOS) became the standard on which other computer makes based their systems.

If Gates and Allen had a better understanding of business principles, they might have done better in their first years. The pair suffered financial difficulties during a protracted legal battle, and having a bet

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this backdrop of computer software as big business Microsoft now competes; this is the environment which Microsoft has itself fostered. However, Microsoft's contribution to the computer environment was not accomplished without reaping substantial benefit of its own. The company's stock has performed well recently, although it remains priced well out of the range of many casual investors. The following chart illustrates the stock's performance from September through October 1996:
While there has been some movement in the stock during this two-month period, the stock has most recently remained steady between 130 and 140. The company does not pay dividends on its common stock, and price appreciation is the way in which investors must evaluate this investment vehicle. The company's revenues have increased steadily during the early 1990s, posting gains of more than 20 percent per year from 1993 to 1996; equally impressive is the company's ability to translate those gains into profit since, during each of those years, the company's profit increased at approximately the same rate as revenues. Revenues and profitability were particularly impressive for 1996, when revenues increased more than 46 percent over 1995, and profits
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Approximate Word count = 1364
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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