Microsoft's

The Windows operating system faces competition from various software products and from alternative platforms and devices, mainly from Apple and Google. We believe Windows competes effectively by giving customers choice, value, flexibility, security, an easy-to-use interface, compatibility with a broad range of hardware and software applications, including those that enable productivity, and the largest support network for any operating system.

Competitors to the versions of Office included in D&C Licensing include global application vendors such as Apple and Google, numerous web-based competitors, and local application developers in Asia and Europe. Apple distributes versions of its pre-installed application software, such as email, note taking, and calendar products, through its PCs, tablets, and phones. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite and distributes its productivity services through the Android and Chrome operating systems. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications can also position themselves as alternatives to our products. We believe our products compete effectively based on our strategy of providing powerful, flexible, secure, and easy to use solutions that work across a variety of devices.
Windows Phone operating system faces competition from iOS, Android, and Blackberry operating systems. Windows Phone competes based on differentiated user interface, personalized applications, compatibility with Windows PCs and tablets, and other unique capabilities.

Our Xbox Platform competes with console platforms from Sony and Nintendo, both of which have a large, established base of customers. The lifecycle for gaming and entertainment consoles averages five to ten years. Nintendo released their latest generation console in November 2012. Sony released their latest generation console in November 2013.
We believe the success of gaming and entertainment consoles is determined by the availability of games for the console, providing exclusive game content that gamers seek, the computational power and reliability of the console, and the ability to create new experiences via online services, downloadable content, and peripherals. In addition to Sony and Nintendo, we compete with other providers of entertainment services through online marketplaces. We believe the Xbox Platform is effectively positioned against competitive products and services based on significant innovation in hardware architecture, user interface, developer tools, online gaming and entertainment services, and continued strong exclusive content from our own game franchises as well as other digital content offerings.

Surface devices face competition from computer, tablet, and other hardware manufacturers, many of which are also current or potential partners and customers.

Our phones face competition primarily from Samsung and Apple, as well as many other mobile device manufacturers. We believe our phones will compete by being tailored for virtually every demographic and geography worldwide, offering unique industrial design and imaging technologies at high and low ranges of price points, and by incorporating Microsoft’s digital work and digital life experiences.

We face competition for our Resale products and services from various online marketplaces, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Our search and display advertising business competes with Google and a wide array of websites, social platforms like Facebook, and portals like Yahoo! that provide content and online offerings to end users. Our success depends on our ability to attract new users, understand intent, and match intent with relevant content and advertiser offerings. We believe we can attract new users by continuing to offer new and compelling products and services. We differentiate our offerings by providing a broad selection of content that helps users make faster, informed decisions, and take action more quickly by providing relevant search results, expanded search services, and deeply-integrated social recommendations.

Competitors to Office 365 Consumer are the same as those discussed above for Office Consumer.

Competitors to Studios are the same as those discussed above for our Xbox gaming and entertainment business, as well as game studios like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.

Our server operating system products face competition from a wide variety of server operating systems and applications offered by companies with a range of market approaches. Vertically integrated computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle offer their own versions of the Unix operating system preinstalled on server hardware. Nearly all computer manufacturers offer server hardware for the Linux operating system and many contribute to Linux operating system development. The competitive position of Linux has also benefited from the large number of compatible applications now produced by many commercial and non-commercial software developers. A number of companies, such as Red Hat, supply versions of Linux.

We compete to provide enterprise-wide computing solutions and point solutions with numerous commercial software vendors that offer solutions and middleware technology platforms, software applications for connectivity (both Internet and intranet), security, hosting, database, and e-business servers. IBM and Oracle lead a group of companies focused on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition that compete with our enterprise-wide computing solutions. Commercial competitors for our server applications for PC-based distributed client/server environments include CA Technologies, IBM, and Oracle. Our web application platform software competes with open source software such as Apache, Linux, MySQL, and PHP. In middleware, we compete against Java middleware such as Geronimo, Wildfly, and Spring Framework.

Our system management solutions compete with server management and server virtualization platform providers, such as BMC, CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and VMware. Our database, business intelligence, and data warehousing solutions offerings compete with products from IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other companies. Our products for software developers compete against offerings from Adobe, IBM, Oracle, other companies, and open-source projects, including Eclipse (sponsored by CA Technologies, IBM, Oracle, and SAP), PHP, and Ruby on Rails, among others.
Our embedded systems compete in a highly fragmented environment in which key competitors include IBM, Intel, and versions of embeddable Linux from commercial

Linux vendors such as Metrowerks and MontaVista Software.
We believe our server products provide customers with advantages in performance, total costs of ownership, and productivity by delivering superior applications, development tools, compatibility with a broad base of hardware and software applications, security, and manageability.
Competitors to Windows Commercial are the same as those discussed above for Windows in the D&C Licensing segment.

Office Commercial revenue growth depends on our ability to add value to the core product set and to continue to expand our product offerings in other areas such as content management, enterprise search, collaboration, unified communications, and business intelligence. Competitors to Office Commercial includes software application vendors such as Adobe Systems, Apple, Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and numerous web-based competitors as well as local application developers in Asia and Europe. Cisco Systems is using its position in enterprise communications equipment to grow its unified communications business. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications can also position themselves as alternatives to our products. We believe our products compete effectively based on our strategy of providing powerful, flexible, secure, easy to use solutions that work well with technologies our customers already have and are available on a device or via the cloud.

Skype competes with a variety of instant messaging, voice, and video communication providers, ranging from start-ups to established enterprises.
Our Microsoft Dynamics products compete with vendors such as Oracle and SAP in the market for large organizations and divisions of global enterprises. In the market focused on providing solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, our Microsoft Dynamics products compete with vendors such as Infor, The Sage Group, and NetSuite. Salesforce.com’s cloud CRM offerings compete directly with Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises offerings.

The Enterprise Services business competes with a wide range of companies that provide strategy and business planning, application development, and infrastructure services, including multinational consulting firms and small niche businesses focused on specific technologies.
Competitors to Office 365 Commercial are the same as those discussed above for Office Commercial.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s online offerings primarily compete with Salesforce.com’s on-demand CRM offerings.
Microsoft Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, VMware, and other open source offerings.