Word: succession
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Microsoft (MSFT) has never had much success in the businesses of creating and marketing hardware. Why should it? Microsoft is the world's largest software company. The firm has tried to become the GE of technology for over a decade; a conglomerate in several loosely related businesses that support one another even if that support is only tangential...
...Microsoft's efforts to expand fall primarily into two businesses. One is online content and search and the other is the development hardware devices. The company has not been able to duplicate the level of success that it has had in its software operations. The list of stories about Microsoft's failure to make progress in the search engine business stretches on and on. Not quite as well-chronicled are Microsoft's efforts to compete in the video game and portable multimedia player business. The Xbox has only started to make money recently and the margins are small...
...Microsoft tried to get part of the portable media player business from the Apple (AAPL) iPod. It launched its Zune product and after an initial marketing push, the product is still available but posting only modest sales. Microsoft now wants another piece of Apple's success. It apparently is in talks to launch a smartphone with Verizon (VZ), which competes with AT&T (T). AT&T has the exclusive sales franchise for the Apple iPhone in the U.S., so, in theory, Microsoft and Verizon would each benefit from creating competition for one of the most successful cell phones in history...
...while Microsoft may not have been successful in its efforts to diversity, it is right to continue to invest billions of dollars a year to keep trying. If it does not, the company will, over a period of many years, lose its dominance in the software market it created and have nothing to replace it with. It may be a long shot for the company to create the next important consumer electronic device or online search tool, but Microsoft has as good a chance, if not a better one, than any other company in the world at success...
...fried eggplant is Iraqi. “[Ben-Yehoyada] was incredible,” said Sarah B. Honig ’10, a member of the Harvard Culinary Society, which co-sponsored the event with the Harvard Students for Israel. “I thought it was a huge success...