Principles of Marketing (SWOT analysis )

Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack who suggest that it 's Microsoft 's ability to spot technological trends and exploit key software technologies that best explain why they are still number one In a joint statement , they said that the essence of their argument is that the key to Microsoft 's success is the way it manages its intellectual property (IP . By this we don 't just mean patents , but the broad base of knowledge that the company has built over time (which is critical to internal innovation , as it

makes product development more efficient and powerful ' In short , Microsoft began codifying knowledge and embedding it such a way that it got to decide which components to "expose , and which to keep hidden , thus providing a mechanism that protects its core IP . Furthermore , Microsoft is able to successfully respond to threats and opportunities arising from technological transitions with the rise of the Internet for example , it quickly developed its own web browser and soon became a leader in that category Iansti and MacCormack 's research also found that Microsoft products were consistently rated highly by independent reviewers when compared to competitive offerings , a result that held true across different product categories and over time . This indicates that Microsoft continues to be well-favoured in the market (Kramer , 2004

Weaknesses

Some of its weaknesses includes the dependency on hardware manufacturer to pre-install Microsoft 's PC operating system . It was during the years 1990 to 1995 that the Microsoft leadership failed to correctly anticipate the growth of the Internet . There have also been falling sales with regards to operating systems and server software sectors (Hafner and Hibbert

Opportunities

Good businessmen know that one should never put all their eggs in one basket . Indeed , Microsoft is wisely pressing beyond the market of...