Microsoft turns 45 on April 4, and the company nearly synonymous with the personal computer still dominates the globe with their most popular product in its illustrious history.
Windows operating system, created 10 years after Microsoft’s founding, can be found on nearly three quarters of all desktop and mobile computers in the world as of February 2020. 73 percent of all computers run some version of Windows, and the next leading competitor – Macintosh from Apple – accounts for only 17 percent of the total global market share. The two next popular operating systems in iOS and Android account for a combined 5 percent share.
What started as a small software company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen has since grown into one of only four companies to ever enter the $1 trillion market capitalization club. The long history of success and mass appeal for Windows has allowed the company to create other popular computing products. These include their incredibly popular Microsoft Office productivity software, as well as their own gaming console (Xbox) and line of laptops and tablets (Surface).
