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Chances are you’re using Windows(TM)

But do you KNOW how and WHY Windows became the number 1 computer platform?

Why should you care about this?

Because if you DO know that secret then you can accommodate your Business in a similar way.

For example, let’s say you sell soaps online. Wouldn’t be great to have EVERY household all over the world using YOUR soaps? Sounds good eh? Or say you sell cars. Wouldn’t be great if all humans preferred YOUR store for buying their car?
Yep… that’s every seller’s dream.

Here is the know how – you may get a coffee, tea or juice and enjoy the knowledge:

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque on April 4, 1975. Bill was 20 and Paul was 18 years old.
Bill and Paul had to make a decision:

Should he create HARDWARE, aka. computer machines and thus compete with existing companies like IBM(R) and Hewlett Packard(R)?

Or should he focus on SOFTWARE, aka. programs for computers?

For the records, Personal Computers (PCs) as we know them today were absent even as a team until 1962. An early use of the term “personal computer” appeared in a November 3, 1962, New York Times article reporting John W. Mauchly’s vision of future computing as detailed at a recent meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. Mauchly stated, “There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer.”

They decided to focus on SOFTWARE.

The reasons are obvious now, but you need to think about it through the historical framework described above in order to understand HOW DIFFICULT that dilemma was for Bill & Paul.

Apple(R) was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. The partners were correspondingly 21, 26 and 42 years old. Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977 without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple.

The first successful “Personal Computer” was actually created by Apple with the name: Macintosh 128. Its case contained a 9-inch monitor and was coming with a keyboard and mouse. It had a selling price of US$2,495. The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. Its debut, however, was announced by a single national broadcast of the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial, “1984″. It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 24, 1984, and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece.” 1984 used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother). These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.”

Pay attention to the following facts:

Without funds on their genesis, Apple’s future was ambiguous. Armas Clifford “Mike” Markkula Jr., 35 years old in 1977, has been considered as “an angel investor who provided early critical funding for Apple.” That gives light behind Wayne’s early resignation.

It took Apple almost 8 years to reach success with ‘Macintosh.’ From Apple I to Macintosh there had been various efforts/failures to reach the market – and financial success. “Lisa” was their last effort before Macintosh, introduced in 1983 and offered to the market at a cost of US$9,995. As you can easily understand, at such price, “Lisa” failed to penetrate the market.

Sidenote: The effectiveness of Apple’s company to communicate with the mass and thus reach their gigantic success is analyzed in detail by “O Marketing” – the third level of the “Delaverian Marketing Course” – www.DelaverianMarketing.com, along with instructions on how the marketer could use that knowledge and apply those secrets online for replicating success on demand.

Microsoft restructured on June 25, 1981, to become an incorporated business in Washington, and as part of the restructuring, Bill Gates became president of the company and Chairman of the Board, and Paul Allen became Executive Vice President.

The first operating system Microsoft publicly released was a variation of Unix in 1980.

(In order to understand the swift in Bill and Paul’s minds throughout the years, consider this: Today the most successful operating systems for servers are: UNIX (and all Unix-like systems, like Linux for example) and Windows. Why did they abandon Unix and turn to Windows?)

Sidenote: Linux is an anagram of Unix plus the letter L – the first letter of the creator of that language Linus Torvalds.

(The strategy of using the collective memory of society as one body for penetrating new brands easier and faster by targeting the subconscious mind of the mass is analyzed in detail by “O Marketing” – the third level of the “Delaverian Marketing Course” – www.DelaverianMarketing.com, along with instructions on how the marketer could use that knowledge and apply those secrets online for replicating success on demand.)

To make the story short Bill and Paul had concluded that the war on the Personal Computers’ level would be won by those that will manage to

a) create an easy computer language that should be used as a standard operating system (OS) because of the friendliness both toward the coders and also to the users of the computers, and
b) ally with a colossus company producer of Hardware.

Approaching their conclusion through another angle, they should not try to do 2 things and be THE BEST on both: create software AND hardware. As you can see, that was what Apple has been doing since its creation.

(Again, while that conclusion seems superficially logical, the depth of its meaning and of the lessons one can get are huge…
Bill and Gates did not just want to create a profitable business. That was TOO easy for them. They were both excellent and fast coders. Creating “programs” for computers would sent fortunes to them easy and fast. So… why didn’t they do just that, and thus prefer the easy way of putting money in their pockets, instead of….?
…instead of having a vision to become the number 1 software company in the World?

Can you answer that question?

Rethink about this and see the analogy:

Why shouldn’t one use just an easy plan to send money to his pocket again and again by selling products and services online, and instead would s/he prefer to first study, then observe the market, then define his/her own uniqueness and no. 1 talent that would work as ammunition to the ABSOLUTE success, aka. the domination of the targeted market?

The answer is 1 word only: VISION.

Read my previous article to understand why SOME people DO NOT have a vision and why some others can do anything they want in life.)

Back to our story: Since their vision was to dominate the market to what they’d do, producing hardware AND software was not proved as the BEST plan. Microsoft had the time to plan their attack in the market by studying the results their competitors’ efforts and observing how the market reacts.

Bill and Paul were young men, but they were wise enough to know that one of the ways to defeat “enemies” is to use their momentum and strike it back to them, thus without risking their own momentum in the market, but instead releasing what has already worked and avoiding what has already failed to reach the mass’ wallets.

The result of their amazingly correct – for their age – strategic decisions came in 1981, when in August 12, after negotiations with Digital Research(R) failed, IBM(R) awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (PC.)

And that was it.

The importance of that contract with IBM was tremendous – it was the cornerstone of their success, they WAY THEY HAD PLANNED it – OR if you prefer, their correct decisions allowed their future to be planned the perfect way.

IBM already had the heaviest impact in the market. “IBM’s history dates back decades before the development of electronic computers. Of the companies merged to form what later became IBM, the oldest was the Tabulating Machine Company, founded in 1896 by Herman Hollerith, and specialized in the development of punched card data processing equipment.”
Until 1981 “IBM had relied on a vertically integrated strategy, building most key components of its systems itself, including processors, operating systems, peripherals, databases and the like. In an attempt to speed time to market for the PC, IBM chose not to build the operating system and microprocessor internally, rather it sourced these vital components from Microsoft and Intel respectively.”

Now imagine the scene.

Two young men on one side, Bill 25 and Paul 23, and IBM on the other side, a company with more than 80 years of life with a tremendous experience in negotiations (IBM had contracts with the German military/industrial technocracy during World War II, providing to them their punch card machines for keeping track of people who were to be subjected to the Holocaust.)
IBM should have a GREAT reason not only for paying attention to the “boys” but furthermore to trust them for creating their operating system for their machines!

Was that great reason the vision of the boys had mixed with their superb analytical minds, with their code being a proof of what they could do in the future? Did IBM think the same way as Bill and Paul thought, that it’s not good either to be BOTH a hardware AND software producer, and thus decided to assign their software to Bill and Paul?

Maybe.

Was the abandonment of Unix as a language orientation connected with the Macintosh’s success? Unix, like all non-Windows operating systems did not offer a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) environment, but instead the user/coder had a black screen with a blinking cursor on it. Apple on the other side proved that the market loved the WYSIWYG environment. What else would Microsoft want in order to decide to focus on what was to become the no. 1 operating platform on Earth?
NOW you KNOW why the Windows you’re using are offered today PRE-LOADED and as the DEFAULT operating system almost in all brands of computers.

Many big names are missing from the history above.

I bet that elder readers (myself included) played “Pong” back in 70’s, one of the earliest arcade video games released by Atari in 1972 and also Asteroids on 1979.

More brilliant brands like Spectrum, Amiga, Commodore, Acorn Electron BBC, Amstrad by (Sir today) Allan Sugar…

Sidenote: Do you remember the Linux anagram? “Amstrad is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading.

They all failed to reach Microsoft’s or Apple’s level and/or vision.

In a way they tried to compete Apple, by creating their hardware and their software too.
Wrong.

I had to write this “Introduction” of over 1,700 words in order to help you understand easier and faster what I am going to tell you right now:

DELAVO is going to be for eCommerce, what Windows is today for personal computers: the DEFAULT operating system.

Can you now feel how heavy that statement is?

And the questions for you now dear marketer…

What would you do if I could turn the time clock back, and place you 30 years ago, before things crystallized in the market in 1979… And say you could buy some 1000s of stocks for one of those companies: Atari, Apple and Microsoft…
Which one would you bet your future on taking into consideration only the historical data you’ve been provided with through this article and NOT what you already know today?

Next, last question, and epilogue:

What do you consider as a wise move for your future:

Play “Pong” and “Asteroids,” aka. trusting the future of your online business and risking the happiness in life by using solutions that may entertain your needs….

Or use what is going soon to be the default OS for eCommerce?

The choice is yours.

Enjoy the journey – wisely.

John Delavera

Sources: My brain, its memories and

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft#cite_note-thocp1-5

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

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