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Competitive Strategies: Apple Vs. Microsoft
Paul Brouse
BUS 508
February 4, 2013

Competitive Strategies: Apple Vs. Microsoft

Since the mid-80s Apple and Microsoft have been locked in a heavy weight battle to become king in the technology industry. While Apple released its first Macintosh computer in 1984, Microsoft followed shortly after with the release of Windows 1.0 just a year later. The two struggled to gain a foothold on the market, and have been trying to outdo one another ever since.
Corporate Culture
Apple has long been known to have a very uncompromising corporate culture. For years Steve Jobs ran the company as a perfectionist who, while very successful, was not typically willing to alter his vision in any way. Where some corporations are a collaboration between the ideas of many individuals with some give and take, Apple products were almost one hundred percent Steve Jobs uncompromising vision. With Microsoft Windows maintaining a huge market share in the personal computing business, Apple never swayed from the concept of putting their Mac OS only on Apple hardware, instead of licensing it to various hardware manufacturers so that it may be on a wide variety of systems. Apple has always been about the vision of Steve Jobs, and the man was almost more of a designer than a technology guru, which is an indication of why the Apple iPhone with its superior design has been so successful.
Another noticeable concept of Apple’s corporate culture is its secrecy with new products. Whether it is the new iPhone, iPad, or Mac OS operating system Apple does not let any information leak until that calculated moment that they choose to announce is to the world. That moment tends to be very shortly before the product is set to launch.
Microsoft on the other hand tends to have a more traditional, hierarchal type of corporate culture. With thousands of

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