Saving Your Biggest Competitor - (why Microsoft save Apple)

Would you have ever thought that your greatest competitor can be your savior at the verge of bankruptcy? This is the case of Apple and Microsoft. A lot of you might ask, when the Apple save Microsoft from bankruptcy since Apple is a trillion dollar company but the reverse is the case here, Microsoft saved Apple when it was at the verge of bankruptcy. But why will Microsoft save Apple which was a competition to their market

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Unlike now, Apple in its early years weren’t into phones but rather the selling of PCs, they were into computer business and that’s why they bared the name Apple Computer. When apple started in 1997, the company had problem with it market shares as the company wasn’t sharing its operating system with any other company and the cost for the computers were very expensive on the other hand, Microsoft in the same year was having a 90% increase in market shares and it product was a success as it met with businesses and company’s needs. It was easy to create software for Microsoft than to create a software for Apple as creating Apple software were twice as expensive compared to creating a software for Microsoft. So without a software, there was no need for the computer and this dragged Apple down real well.

Jobs came back to the company after several failures from so many CEOs of Apple and decided to bring Microsoft in so Apple can be saved. In August 6, 1997, Steve Jobs gave an announcement of partnering with Microsoft which was its biggest competitor. Apple needed the help of Microsoft else the ship will sink, so Microsoft helped with its internet explorer, Microsoft office and $150 Million dollar worth of preferential non-voting shares. So Bill Gates singlehandedly solved both the finance problem of Apple and the software problem of Apple. In other words, Bill saved Apple but why did he do it?

Bill as a young man was willing to succeed and did all he could to and luckily, he did succeeded become a monopoly in his industry and this was attracting anti-trust regulators who could close his empire for being a monopoly. In other to get away with this, he quickly decided to assist Apple as doing this would save his company in the future when he was in court over trust related petitions. So Bill just saved the prey to save himself. What did bill do to the shares?

Immediately after the anti-trust petitions were over, Bill converted the shares to ordinary shares which he sold in 2003.