A giant in the world of technology, Microsoft was once the biggest company in the world with market capitalization of $510 billion in 2000. According to Kurt Eichenwald’s article titled Microsoft’s Lost Decade, “Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.” What generated this colossal downfall? From lack of innovation to internal destructive ambition the company has been reduced to a mere competitor in a market, which it ruled. Programmers stopped developing products in search for improvement, but rather to beat their co-workers in a feisty fight for career development. A new management system called “stack ranking” was implemented, which compared employees and encouraged unhealthy competition.

The maintenance of windows and office and the lack of development are also said to be causes that have “frozen” Microsoft in time. It’s even been found out that Microsoft had initial projects in 1998 of developing a sort of touch pad, similar to today’s Ipad by apple, but Bill Gates himself shut down this bold proposal because he thought it didn’t look like Microsoft (2). Recent problems with some of the company’s products, including the infamous “red ring of death”, a defect in the Xbox 360’s hardware, have left the company with an even bigger market share loss.

Microsoft’s negative example should serve as a lesson to all, that no company that has reached a pinnacle of dominance over its competition will always be sovereign.

(1)(2) http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer