Microsoft: Looking into the Past - Great Success
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After MS-DOS, Microsoft signed another agreement with IBM to collaborate on another operating system: OS/2. Although OS/2 was never a great success for either company, the agreement did show that Microsoft had become so prestigious and powerful in such a short time that IBM was willing to overlook the fact that the software development firm had effectively ruined IBM’s control over the PC market.
Later in 1985, Microsoft released its first version of Windows, intended as a graphical extension of MS-DOS. In the next year, Microsoft went public and experienced great trading success in its very first day on the market. In 1987, OS/2 was finally released, though it never caught on in any market.
In 1989, Microsoft launched its largely successful software package, Microsoft Office. Office is known for its inclusion of Microsoft Word and Excel, as well as several other programs extensively used throughout the personal and professional world.
The next year, in 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0, a very popular new operating system that sold 100,000 copies in its first two weeks. At around the same time, Microsoft determined that OS/2 was a losing venture, and more or less abandoned the project. Far from a setback, this project failure ensured the great success of Windows by securing an even greater market share.
During the early nineties, Microsoft focused a great deal of attention on securing Microsoft Office’s prominence in the office tools market. By using their deep knowledge of Windows systems, Microsoft was able to develop Microsoft Office to perform at a far superior level in comparison with its competition. The result was that Office quickly gained a dominating share of the market, reaffirming Microsoft as a software development giant.
The early to mid nineties saw the release of Windows NT 3.1 and Windows 95. Both operating systems were huge leaps in OS technology, and helped secure Microsoft’s control over the OS market even more. Microsoft managed to sell over a million copies of Windows 95 in just the first four days that it was on the market. Along with Windows 95 came the release of Microsoft’s Internet browser, Internet Explorer. The web browser would be included with all future versions of Windows and would come to dominate the browser market.
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