When I think in Microsoft (www.microsoft.com)….

… I immediately think in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Messenger, Microsoft Internet Explorer… tools that I use in a daily basis and that I couldn’t imagine me living without them. For me Microsoft has been and is still the top world company in developing software.

According to http://www.wikipedia.org/, Microsoft Windows has currently a market share of 91% which demonstrates Microsoft dominance in operating systems segment. Even if competition is increasing I don’t believe that Microsoft will lose is market dominance in operating systems at least in the next 5 years (and 5 years in a world that is changing faster and faster, it’s a long time… ).

If we analyze the browsers segment I believe the story will be another, actually the Internet Explorer has a market share of 50% – 60% after having around 95% during 2002 and 2003 (Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/). Microsoft is slowly losing market share in this segment and probably will lose the market dominance in the next years.

My favorite Microsoft product, Microsoft Office (Excel in particular) is used by 80% of the enterprises (Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/). I had to do some research to find out what are the competitors for this product and in the article http://www.pcworld.com/article/49506/suite_survivors.html , Corel’s WordPerfect, Lotu’s SmartSuite and Sun’s StarOffice are pointed has the competitors (the article highlights the best prices of this products and the offer of some features that office lacks).

Just to finish I would like to convey that in my opinion Microsoft has been a very innovative company (even with some flops in the way) launching continuously new versions of his products. I believe that Microsoft will continue for a long time a top player in software development even with the increasing competition.