“Disruptive Technology” has become somewhat of a buzz term in the past few years. Commonly it is dropped into discussions involving Apple technologies such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The media has used this as a weapon towards Microsoft in asking “well what has Microsoft done” on this level of disruption ?
Apart from the browser, office productivity tools are the backbone for most content produced both personally and within the enterprise on a daily basis across the globe. Undisputed king in area this is Microsoft Office. But it wasn’t always the case. Pre 1989, as shown below, there was a raft of office suites and tools, Word Perfect (remember the keyboard templates), Word Star, Lotus 1 2 3 etc. In 1989 Microsoft Word “disrupted” and with 5 years, everything else became a distant memory.
Source: “Software Gems: The Computer History Museum Historical Source Code Series”
Microsoft’s dominance in this arena remains at around 95% of the market according to Forbe’s 2013 article “An Overview Why Microsoft’s Worth $42”. This is an overwhelming number such that in the same way in which people look at Blackberry users like they have two heads, I found myself puzzled the other day scratching my head when someone sent through a file in PAGES format (go on look it up).
Similarly, Microsoft holds 75% of the server software (many said Windows Server would never get past Windows NT) l and operating systems markets (many said Vista would be the death of Microsoft).
OK, so nothing is lasts for ever, and even the media’s sweetheart Apple is finally seeing their consumer products dominance being challenged. Forbes is still only forecasting a decline to 90% in office, so Microsoft will retain a hefty hold on both the front and back end systems that allow us to produce then store the content that drives the enterprise.
With all the (left wing) tech. media we are barraged with we are sometimes left doubting Microsoft, but take a minute to reflect on numbers rather than opinion in revealing that Microsoft remains on the top of the technology heap.
References:
Shustek L, “Software Gems: The Computer History Museum Historical Source Code Series”, viewed 5 May 2014, http://www.computerhistory.org/_static/atchm/microsoft-word-for-windows-1-1a-source-code/
Trefis Team, “An Overview Why Microsoft’s Worth $42”, viewed 5 May 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/01/09/an-overview-why-microsofts-worth-42/
Paul Smith, 2014, “Google Android challenges Apple’s Australian tablet dominance”, viewed 5 May 2014, http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_android_challenges_apple_geANbo9WDZK57Z620aqacM
Matthew Verity 