On 31st July 1987, Microsoft made the brave and
somewhat unusual decision to buy the software rights for a program called
PowerPoint, a software application which had been in development since as early
as 1984.
PowerPoint was originally intended for Apple Computer’s new
Macintosh hardware and indeed, Apple contributed financially to the products
initial development. However, Microsoft got wind of this exciting new software
and proceeded to negotiate for the rights to it. After lengthy discussions and
a number of rejected bids, a deal was finally struck for £14m.
Once the rights had been acquired, it took a further 3 years
before the Windows operating system was good enough, or capable of actually
running the software, but in 1990, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. and
PowerPoint was one of the key applications which demonstrated the capabilities
and thus was used as a selling point for Windows 3.0.
By 1993, Microsoft bundled PowerPoint in with Word and Excel
to form the Microsoft ‘Office’ bundle, an attractively priced trio of common
applications.
To this day, PowerPoint is one of the most popular software
applications and is installed on an estimated one billion computers worldwide.
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