Microsoft: Introduction

I - Introduction

Who never heard about Microsoft? The successful company which started by the work made by a young student called Bill GATES who in some decades became the richest man in the world.

Microsoft is like we want it or not a part of our life. Nowadays it is almost impossible to live without technology. Behind it there is a terminal or more commonly called a computer which is in 90-95% of the cases running by Microsoft products.

It could seems at the first sight that studying the distribution channels of such a company is a work without an end but actually it is not.

The reason is that Microsoft makes most of its benefits through only two products: the Operating System Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Suite Office.

Studying the distribution channels of such software within the distribution policy course at the University of Kassel is a great opportunity to discover the position of a company which has a monopole on a market. It shows the rare case when a company can affords ways of distribution that other competitors do not have or cannot use in order to keep leader's position and to keep it for a very long time.

I chose as well to introduce another product: the Microsoft's search engine “Live Search” which help me for my personal research on my master thesis and also to show distribution channels of new products which are nowadays very fashionable: the free web applications.