Until a few years ago, it seemed that Microsoft had lost its appeal and was lagging behind the advance of other technological giants such as Apple or Facebook.

This Friday, the shares of the company founded by Bill Gates surpassed the value of the company created by Steve Jobs.

Microsoft stood at US $ 851.2 billion, while Apple remained at about US $ 847.4 billion.

Both companies were fighting for the first place all week, but this Friday was the first time that Microsoft was in the lead at the end of the day.

What happened, however, is not limited to a few days.

During the last 12 months the value of Microsoft has increased by more than 30% and its stock market value has almost tripled since 2014.

If the company stays that way at the end of the year, it will be the first time since 2002 that it will head the list of the most valuable companies in the world.

1. Foreign problems
One of the elements that have helped the company created by Bill Gates have been the difficulties faced by its competitors.

Last August, Apple became the first US listed company to achieve a market value of US $ 1 trillion.

A few weeks later, however, their shares fell when their earnings report was lower than expected by investors and the company announced that it will no longer report quarterly on how the sales of its main products are moving.

The news was not well received by a market that has doubts about the ability of the company to continue selling iPhones at a good pace.

The loss of value of their shares in the last month reached almost 16%.

2. Forget about smartphones
Microsoft has also benefited from the things it has renounced. For example, to compete in the market of smart phones.

After a failed bet with Nokia, Microsoft opted to leave the smartphone market.

Although the company acquired the mobile phone division of Nokia in 2013, trying to get on the smart phone, the bet was not so just two years later decided to turn back, but for this they had to assume costly losses.

The company decided not to try to compete in that market where well-established leaders already exist.

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Instead, he chose to focus on the development of apps and software for corporate clients.

These decisions are the responsibility of Satya Nadella, who took over as CEO of the company in 2014 to replace Steve Ballmer.

3. Climb the cloud
Perhaps the greatest success of Microsoft has been the commitment to technology in the “cloud”.

Between Microsoft and Amazon they concentrate 46% of the market of services in the cloud.
Although the company began working in the processing, storage and delivery of services from remote servers in the 1990s, it was not until about 8 years ago when it began offering cloud services.

Under the direction of Satya Nadella, the company made that market a priority and, despite being late – when Amazon was already well established, has managed to become the second company in the sector with a market share of 13% compared to 33% owned by Jeff Bezos.

The company also transformed the Office software to offer the popular Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs from the cloud, which allows it to compete with other products such as Google Docs.

The move has been profitable, leading to an increase in the company’s revenue of 15% over the last year (until last June) and an increase in operating profits of 13% to reach US $ 35,000 million.

Many analysts expect this positive trend to continue because they expect high growth in the future for cloud services, and Microsoft is well placed to take advantage of it.