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HTC History

HTC Corporation pinyin: Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), formerly High-Tech Computer Corporation,is a Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones and tablets headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Founded in 1997, HTC began as an original design manufacturer and original equipment manufacturer, designing and manufacturing devices such as mobile phones, touchscreen phones, and PDAs based on Windows Mobile OS and Brew MP to market to mobile network operators who were willing to pay a contract manufacturer for customized products. After initially making smartphones based mostly on Windows Mobile, HTC expanded its focus in 2009 to devices based on the Android, and in 2010 to Windows Phone. As of 2011, HTC primarily releases and markets its smartphones under the HTC brand, ranking as the 98th top brand on Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2011 report.[6] A September 2013 media report stated that HTC's share of the global smartphone market is less than 3 percent and its stock price has fallen by 90 percent since 2011.

HTC is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of handset manufacturers and mobile network operators dedicated to the development of the Android mobile device platform.The HTC Dream, marketed by T-Mobile in many countries as the T-Mobile G1 or Era G1, was the first phone on the market to use the Android mobile device platform.

History[edit]
Cher Wang H. T. Cho (卓火土), and Peter Chou (周永明) founded HTC in 1997.Initially a manufacturer of notebook computers, HTC began designing some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998.[10] The company is credited with creating the first Android smartphone, the first Microsoft-powered smartphone (2002) and the first Microsoft 3G phone (2005). Their first major product, one of the world's first touch-screen smartphones, appeared in 2000. As an ODM for HP and Palm, HTC built the HP iPAQ and the Palm Treo 650.

In 2007 HTC acquired the mobile-device company Dopod International.

In October 2009, HTC launched the brand tagline "quietly brilliant", and the YOU campaign, HTC's first global advertising campaign.

In June 2010, the company launched the HTC Evo 4G, the first 4G-capable phone in the United States.In July 2010, HTC announced it would begin selling smartphones in China under its own brand name in a partnership with China Mobile.In 2010 HTC sold over 24.6 million handsets, up 111% over 2009.

At the Mobile World Congress on 16 February 2011, the GSM Association named HTC the "Device Manufacturer of the Year" for 2011. In April 2011, the company's market value surpassed that of Nokia, making HTC the third-largest smartphone-maker in the world behind Apple and Samsung.

On 6 July 2011, it was announced that HTC would buy VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3.On 6 August 2011, HTC acquired Dashwire for $18.5M. In August 2011, HTC confirmed a plan for a strategic partnership with Beats Electronics involving acquiring 51 percent of Beats' shares.

On 27 September 2013, HTC announced that it sold back all remaining shares of Beats to Beats Electronics. The deal is expected to be closed in Q4 of 2013.The 2011 Best Global Brands rankings released by Interbrand, listed HTC at #98 and valued it at $3.6 billion.Based on researcher Canalys, in Q3 2011 HTC Corporation became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. with 24 percent market share, ahead of Samsung's 21 percent, Apple Inc.'s 20 percent and BlackBerry's 9 percent. HTC Corporation made different models for each operator.

During early 2012, HTC lost much of this U.S. market share due to increased competition from Samsung and Apple Inc.According to analyst firm comScore, HTC only accounted for 9.3% of the United States smartphone market as of February 2013. In light of the company's decrease in prominence, Chief Executive Peter Chou had informed executives that he would step down if the company's newest flagship phone, the 2013 HTC One, had failed to generate impressive sales results.HTC's first quarter results for 2013 showed its year-over-year profit drop by 98.1%, making it the smallest-ever profit for the company—the delay of the launch of the HTC One was cited as one of the factors.In June 2012, HTC moved its headquarters from Taoyuan City (now Taoyuan District) to Xindian District, New Taipei City.[citation needed]

In August 2013, HTC debuted a new "Here's To Change" global marketing campaign featuring actor Robert Downey, Jr., who signed a two-year contract to be HTC's new "Instigator of Change." On 15 August, HTC began airing the new marketing campaign on YouTube, prior to the campaign's appearance in television and cinema advertising schedules.

On September 27, 2013, HTC announced the sale of its entire stake (24.84 percent) in Beats Electronics. The company will close the deal in the fourth quarter of 2013 and expects a US$85 million pretax profit.]

The 2013 HTC One was released in mid-2013 and, subsequently won various industry awards in the best smartphone and best design categories, but global sales of the HTC One were lower than those for Samsung's Galaxy S4 flagship handset and HTC recorded its first ever quarterly loss in early October 2013: a deficit of just under NT$3 billion (about US$100m, £62m). Marketing problems were identified by HTC as the primary reason for its comparative performance, a factor that had been previously cited by the company.

Following the release of the HTC One, two variants were released to form a trio for the 2013 HTC One lineup. A smaller variant named the HTC One Mini was released in August 2013, and a larger variant named the HTC One Max was released in October 2013. Similar in design and features to the HTC One, the upgraded aspects of the One Max include a display measuring 5.9 inches (15 cm), a fingerprint sensor and a removable back cover for expandable memory.The product was released into the European and Asian retail environment in October 2013, followed by a US launch in early November 2013.

In March 2014, HTC released the 2014 HTC One or "M8", the next version of the HTC One flagship, at press conferences in London and New York City. In a change from previous launches, the HTC One was made available for purchase on the company website and North American mobile carrier websites on the same day a few hours after the launch.

In April 2014, the smartphone company reported sales climbing 12.7 percent to NT$22.1 billion, the company's fastest growth since October 2011.

Dell Inc. is an American privately owned multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells, repairs and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide.

Dell sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and also electronics built by other manufacturers. The company is well known for its innovations in supply chain management and electronic commerce, particularly its direct-sales model and its "build-to-order" or "configure to order" approach to manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications.Dell was a pure hardware vendor for much of its existence, but with the acquisition in 2009 of Perot Systems, Dell entered the market for IT services. The company has since made additional acquisitions in storage and networking systems, with the aim of expanding their portfolio from offering computers only to delivering complete solutions for enterprise customers.

Dell was listed at number 51 in the Fortune 500 list, until 2014.After going private in 2013, the newly confidential nature of its financial information prevents the company from being ranked by Fortune. In 2013 it was the third largest PC vendor in the world after Lenovo and HP. Dell is currently the #1 shipper of PC monitors in the world. Dell is the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue, according to Fortune magazine.It is the second largest non-oil company in Texas – behind AT&T – and the largest company in the Greater Austin area. It was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: DELL), as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500, until it was taken private in a leveraged buyout which closed on October 30, 2013.
History
Main article: History of Dell

Dell's first logo from 1984 to 1989.
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created Dell Computer Corporation, which at the time did business as PC's Limited,  while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components. Dell dropped out of school to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting $1,000 in expansion-capital from his family. In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which sold for $795. PC's Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.

In 1986, Michael Dell brought in Lee Walker, a 51-year-old venture capitalist, as president and chief operating officer, to serve as Michael's mentor and implement Michael's ideas for growing the company. Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988. Walker retired in 1990 due to health, and Michael Dell hired Morton Meyerson, former CEO and president of Electronic Data Systems to transform the company from a fast-growing medium-sized firm into a billion-dollar enterprise.

The company dropped the PC’s Limited dba in 1987 to be Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.

In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, which would have brought in an additional $125 million in annual revenue. However, Bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Indeed, margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the reseller channel in 1994.Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company President and CEO.

Growth in 1990s and early 2000sOriginally, Dell did not emphasize the consumer market, due to the higher costs and unacceptably low profit margins in selling to individuals and households; however, this changed when the company’s Internet site took off in 1996 and 1997. While the industry’s average selling price to individuals was going down, Dell’s was going up, as second- and third-time computer buyers who wanted powerful computers with multiple features and did not need much technical support were choosing Dell. Dell found an opportunity among PC-savvy individuals who liked the convenience of buying direct, customizing their PC to their means, and having it delivered in days. In early 1997, Dell created an internal sales and marketing group dedicated to serving the home market and introduced a product line designed especially for individual users.

From 1997 to 2004, Dell enjoyed steady growth and it gained market share from competitors even during industry slumps. During the same period, rival PC vendors such as Compaq, Gateway, IBM, Packard Bell, and AST Research would struggle and eventually leave the market or get bought out.Dell surpassed Compaq to become the largest PC manufacturer in 1999. Operating costs made up only 10 percent of Dell's $35 billion in revenue in 2002, compared with 21 percent of revenue at Hewlett-Packard, 25 percent at Gateway, and 46 percent at Cisco. In 2002, when Compaq merged with Hewlett Packard (the fourth-place PC maker), the newly combined Hewlett Packard took the top spot but struggled and Dell soon regained its lead. Dell grew the fastest in the early 2000s.

Dell attained and maintained the number 1 rating in PC reliability and customer service/technical support, according to Consumer Reports, year after year, during the mid-to-late 90s through 2001 right before Windows XP was released.

In 1996, Dell began selling computers through its website.

In the mid-1990s, Dell expanded beyond desktop computers and laptops by selling servers, starting with low-end servers. The major three providers of servers at the time were IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Compaq, many of which were based on proprietary technology, such as IBM's Power4 microprocessors or various proprietary versions of the Unix operating system. Dell's new PowerEdge servers did not require a major investment in proprietary technologies, as they ran Microsoft Windows NT on Intel chips, and could be built cheaper than its competitors.[24] Consequently, Dell's enterprise revenues, almost nonexistent in 1994, accounted for 13 percent of the company's total intake by 1998. Three years later, Dell passed Compaq as the top provider of Intel-based servers, with 31 percent of the market. Dell's first acquisition occurred in 1999 with the purchase of ConvergeNet Technologies for $332 million, after Dell had failed to develop an enterprise storage system in-house; however ConvergeNet's elegant but complex technology did not fit in with Dell's commodity-producer business model, forcing Dell to write down the entire value of the acquisition.

In 2002, Dell expanded its product line to include televisions, handhelds, digital audio players, and printers. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, however, had repeatedly blocked President and COO Kevin Rollins's attempt to lessen the company's heavy dependency on PCs, which Rollins wanted to fix by acquiring EMC Corporation.
In 2003, the company was rebranded as simply "Dell Inc." to recognize the company's expansion beyond computers.
In 2004, Michael Dell resigned as CEO while retaining the position of Chairman,handing the CEO title to Kevin Rollins, who had been President and COO since 2001. Despite no longer holding the CEO title, Dell essentially acted as a de facto co-CEO with Rollins.

Under Rollins, Dell began to loosen its ties to Microsoft and Intel, the two companies responsible for Dell's dominance in the PC business. During that time, Dell acquired Alienware,which introduced several new items to Dell products, including AMD microprocessors. To prevent cross-market products, Dell continues to run Alienware as a separate entity, but still a wholly owned subsidiary.

Rollins as CEO and disappointments
However in 2005, while earnings and sales continued to rise, sales growth slowed considerably, and the company stock lost 25% of its value that year. By June 2006, the stock traded around $25 USD which was 40% down from July 2005—the high-water mark of the company in the post-dotcom era.

The slowing sales growth has been attributed to the maturing PC market, which constituted 66% of Dell's sales, and analysts suggested that Dell needed to make inroads into non-PC businesses segments such as storage, services and servers. Dell's price advantage was tied to its ultra-lean manufacturing for desktop PCs,however this became less important as savings became harder to find inside the company's supply chain, and as competitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer made their PC manufacturing operations more efficient to match Dell, weakening Dell's traditional price differentiation. Throughout the entire PC industry, declines in prices along with commensurate increases in performance meant that Dell had fewer opportunities to upsell to their customers (a lucrative strategy of encouraging buyers to upgrade the processor or memory). As a result the company was selling a greater proportion of inexpensive PCs than before, which eroded profit marginsThe laptop segment had become the fastest-growing of the PC market, but Dell produced low-cost notebooks in China like other PC manufacturers which eliminated Dell's manufacturing cost advantages, plus Dell's reliance on Internet sales meant that it missed out on growing notebook sales in big box stores. CNET has suggested that Dell was getting trapped in the increasing commoditization of high volume low margin computers, which prevented it from offering more exciting devices that consumers demanded.
Despite plans of expanding into other global regions and product segments, Dell was heavily dependent on U.S. corporate PC market, as desktop PCs sold to both commercial and corporate customers accounted for 32 percent of its revenue, 85 percent of its revenue comes from businesses, and Sixty-four percent of its revenue comes from North and South America, according to its 2006 third-quarter results. However, U.S. shipments of desktop PCs were shrinking. Furthermore, the corporate PC market which purchases PCs in upgrade cycles had largely decided to take a break from buying new systems. The last cycle started around 2002, three or so years after companies started buying PCs ahead of the perceived Y2K problems, and corporate clients were not expected to upgrade again until extensive testing of Microsoft's Windows Vista (expected in early 2007), putting the next upgrade cycle around 2008.Heavily depending on PCs, Dell had to slash prices to boost sales volumes, while demanding deep cuts from suppliers.
Dell had long stuck by its direct sales model. However consumers had become the main drivers of PC sales in recent years, yet there had a decline in consumers purchasing PCs through the Web or on the phone, as increasing numbers were visiting consumer electronics retail stores to try out the devices first. Dell's rivals in the PC industry, HP, Gateway and Acer, had a long retail presence and so were well poised to take advantage of the consumer shift.The lack of a retail presence stymied Dell's attempts to offer consumer electronics such as flat-panel TVs and MP3 players. Dell responded by experimenting with mall kiosks, plus quasi-retail stores in Texas and New York.

Dell had a reputation as a company that relied upon supply chain efficiencies to sell established technologies at low prices, instead of being an innovatorBy the mid-2000s many analysts were looking to innovating companies as the next source of growth in the technology sector. Dell's low spending on R&D relative to its revenue (compared to IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Apple Inc.)—which worked well in the commoditized PC market—prevented it from making inroads into more lucrative segments, such as MP3 players and later mobile devices.[29] Increasing spending on R&D would have cut into the operating margins that the company emphasized.[4] Dell had done well with a horizontal organization that focused on PCs when the computing industry moved to horizontal mix-and-match layers in the 1980s, however by the mid-2000 the industry shifted to vertically integrated stacks to deliver complete IT solutions and Dell lagged far behind competitors like Hewlett Packard and Oracle.

Dell's reputation for poor customer service, since 2002, which was exacerbated as it moved call centres offshore and as its growth outstripped its technical support infrastructure, came under increasing scrutiny on the Web. The original Dell model was known for high customer satisfaction when PCs sold for thousands but by the 2000s, the company could not justify that level of service when computers in the same lineup sold for hundreds. Rollins responded by shifting Dick Hunter from head of manufacturing to head of customer service. Hunter, who noted that Dell's DNA of cost-cutting "got in the way," aimed to reduce call transfer times and have call center representatives resolve inquiries in one call. By 2006, Dell had spent $100 million in just a few months to improve on this, and rolled out DellConnect to answer customer inquiries more quickly. In July 2006, the company started its Direct2Dell blog, and then in February 2007, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com, asking customers for advice including selling Linux computers and reducing the promotional "bloatware" on PCs. These initiatives did manage to cut the negative blog posts from 49% to 22%, as well as reduce the "Dell Hell" prominent on Internet search engines.

There was also criticism that Dell used faulty components for its PCs, particularly the 11.8 million OptiPlex desktop computers sold to businesses and governments from May 2003 to July 2005, that suffered from bad capacitors made by a company called Nichicon.A battery recall in August 2006, as a result of a Dell laptop catching fire caused much negative attention for the company though later, Sony was found responsible for the faulty batteries.

2006 marked the first year that Dell's growth was slower than the PC industry as a whole. By the fourth quarter of 2006, Dell lost its title of the largest PC manufacturer to rival Hewlett Packard whose Personal Systems Group was invigorated thanks to a restructuring initiated by their CEO Mark Hurd.

After four out of five quarterly earnings reports were below expectations, Rollins resigned as President and CEO on January 31, 2007 and founder Michael Dell assumed the role of CEO again

Dell 2.0 and downsizing[edit]
Dell announced a change campaign called "Dell 2.0," reducing the number of employees and diversifying the company's products.[36][44] While chairman of the board after relinquishing his CEO position, Michael Dell still had significant input in the company during Rollins' years as CEO. However with the return of Michael Dell as CEO, the company saw immediate changes in operations, the exodus of many senior vice-presidents and new personnel brought in from outside the company. Michael Dell announced a number of initiatives and plans (part of the "Dell 2.0" initiative) to improve the company's financial performance. These include elimination of 2006 bonuses for employees with some discretionary awards, reduction in the number of managers reporting directly to Michael Dell from 20 to 12, and reduction of "bureaucracy." Jim Schneider retired as CFO and was replaced by Donald Carty, as the company came under an SEC probe for its accounting practices.

On April 23, 2008, Dell announced the closure of one of its biggest Canadian call-centers in Kanata, Ontario, terminating approximately 1100 employees, with 500 of those redundancies effective on the spot, and with the official closure of the center scheduled for the summer. The call-center had opened in 2006 after the city of Ottawa won a bid to host it. Less than a year later, Dell planned to double its workforce to nearly 3,000 workers add a new building. However these plans were reversed, due to a high Canadian dollar that made the Ottawa staff relatively expensive, and also as part of Dell's turnaround, which involved moving these call-center jobs offshore to cut costs. The company had also announced the shutdown of its Edmonton, Alberta office, losing 900 jobs. In total, Dell announced the ending of about 8,800 jobs in 2007-2008 — 10% of its workforce.

By the late 2000s, Dell's "configure to order" approach of manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications from its US facilities was no longer as efficient or competitive with high-volume Asian contract manufacturers as PCs became powerful low-cost commodities.Dell closed plants that produced desktop computers for the North American market, including the Mort Topfer Manufacturing Center in Austin, Texas (original location) and Lebanon, Tennessee (opened in 1999) in 2008 and early 2009, respectively. The desktop production plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received $280 million USD in incentives from the state and opened in 2005, but ceased operations in November 2010. Dell's contract with the state required them to repay the incentives for failing to meet the conditions, and they sold the North Carolina plant to Herbalif. Most of the work that used to take place in Dell's U.S. plants was transferred to contract manufacturers in Asia and Mexico, or some of Dell's own factories overseas. The Miami, Florida facility of its Alienware subsidiary remains in operation, while Dell continues to produce its servers (its most profitable products) in Austin, Texas.  On January 8, 2009 Dell announced the closure of its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland with the loss of 1,900 jobs and the transfer of production to its plant in Łodź in Poland.

The release of Apple's iPad tablet computer had a negative impact on Dell and other major PC vendors, as consumers switched away from desktop and laptop PCs. Dell's own mobility division has not managed success with developing smartphones or tablets, whether running Windows or Google Android.The Dell Streak was a failure commercially and critically due to its outdated OS, numerous bugs, and low resolution screen. InfoWorld suggested that Dell and other OEMs saw tablets as a short-term, low-investment opportunity running Google Android, an approach that neglected user interface and failed to gain long term market traction with consumers.Dell has responded by pushing higher-end PCs, such as the XPS line of notebooks, which do not compete with the Apple iPad and Kindle Fire tablets.The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers instead of PCs drove Dell's consumer segment to an operating loss in Q3 2012. In December 2012, Dell suffered its first decline in holiday sales in five years, despite the introduction of Windows 8.

In the shrinking PC industry, Dell continued to lose market share, as it dropped below Lenovo in 2011 to fall to number three in the world. Dell and fellow American contemporary Hewlett Packard came under pressure from Asian PC manufacturers Lenovo, Asus, and Acer, all of which had lower production costs and willing to accept lower profit margins. In addition, while the Asian PC vendors had been improving their quality and design, for instance Lenovo's ThinkPad series was winning corporate customers away from Dell's laptops, Dell's customer service and reputation had been slipping.[61][62] Dell remained the second-most profitable PC vendor, as it took 13 percent of operating profits in the PC industry during Q4 2012, behind Apple Inc.'s Macintosh that took 45 percent, seven percent at Hewlett Packard, six percent at Lenovo and Asus, and one percent for Acer.

Dell has been attempting to offset its declining PC business, which still accounted for half of its revenue and generates steady cash flow,[64] by expanding into the enterprise market with servers, networking, software, and services.It avoided many of the acquisition writedowns and management turnover that plagued its chief rival Hewlett Packard.Dell also managed some success in taking advantage of its high-touch direct sales heritage to establish close relationships and design solutions for clients. However despite spending $13 billion on acquisitions to diversify its portfolio beyond hardware,the company was unable to convince the market that it could thrive or made the transformation in the post-PC world,as it suffered continued declines in revenue and share price. Dell's market share in the corporate segment was previously a "moat" against rivals but this has no longer been the case as sales and profits have dropped fallen precipitously.

2013 buyout[edit]
After several weeks of rumors, which started around January 11, 2013, Dell announced on February 5, 2013 that it had struck a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout deal, that would have delisted its shares from the NASDAQ and Hong Kong Stock Exchange and taken it private. Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners, aided by a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, will buy the public shares at $13.65 a piece. The $24.4 billion buyout is the largest leveraged buyout backed by private equity since the 2007 financial crisis.It is also the largest technology buyout ever, surpassing the 2006 buyout of Freescale Semiconductor for $17.5 billion.

The founder of Dell, Michael Dell, said of the buyout "I believe this transaction will open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members". Dell rival Lenovo reacted to the buyout, saying "the financial actions of some of our traditional competitors will not substantially change our outlook".Meanwhile, HP stated that Dell's traditional product innovation might suffer as a result of the buyout.

The buyout price represents a small premium over the current stock price, and much lower than the stock's all-time high of $65 USD per share reached during the dotcom bubble in 2000, as well as its July 2005 price of $40 USD which was the high-water mark of the post-dotcom era. The price of $13.65 per share represented a 25 per cent premium to the stock price, but far below the 52-week high of $18.36, and more than 76 per cent off its all-time high.Several major institutional shareholders have voiced opposition, including Southeastern Asset Management and Mason Hawkins.[Michael Dell owns the largest single share of the company's stock and was part of negotiations to go private, however he is offering only $750 million of his own money for a deal that will involve almost $16 billion in new debt. T. Rowe Price, which has the third largest holding, also objected to the low price of the proposal.Southeastern Asset Management, the largest shareholder of Dell stock with about 8.5%, is opposed to the deal at the per share price of $13.50 to $13.75 as they value the company at $23.72 a share.Southeastern also complained that the overseas funds aren't offered to sweeten the buyout offer.

Typical leveraged buyouts have been viewed as tools of vulture capitalists. Ordinarily, the buyer seeks to break up the firm and layoff workers, or bring greater efficiency and new management to a troubled firm. The Dell leveraged buyout is unusual because the driving force behind the deal was not a vulture capitalist, but rather, Michael Dell, who was already the Chairman and CEO, founder, and largest shareholder of the firm. Unlike most leveraged buyouts that aim to wrest management control away from incumbents, the Dell deal intends to keep the same leadership team in place. The main aim of Dell's leveraged buyout is to rejigger the company’s financial structure.By going private, Dell would be able to radically restructure its legacy PC business and build up its enterprise solutions and cloud computing, without worrying about the impact on its quarterly results and its stock price.Gartner has warned that this may include Dell leaving the PC market entirely.

In March 2013, the Blackstone Group and Carl Icahn expressed interest in purchasing Dell. In April 2013, Blackstone withdrew their offer, citing deteriorating business. Other private equity firms such as KKR & Co. and TPG Capital declined to submit alternative bids for Dell, citing the uncertain market for personal computers and competitive pressures, so the "wide-open bidding war" never materialized. Analysts said that the biggest challenge facing Silver Lake would be to find an “exit strategy” to profit from its investment, which would be when the company would hold an IPO to go public again, and one warned “But even if you can get a $25bn enterprise value for Dell, it will take years to get out.”

In May 2013, Dell joined his board in voting for his offer. The following August he reached a deal with the special committee on the board for a raised price of $13.75 plus a special dividend of 13 cents per share, as well as a change to the voting rules.[93] The offer was accepted on September 12and closed on October 30, 2013, ending Dell's 25 year run as a publicly traded company.

After the buyout the newly private Dell offered a Voluntary Separation Programme that they expected to reduce their workforce by up to seven percent. The reception to the program so exceeded the expectations that Dell may be forced to hire new staff to make up for the losses.

On July 18, 2014, Dell announced that customers would be able to make purchases on its website using Bitcoin, claiming to become the biggest retailer yet to accept the virtual currency.

World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War (after the recent Great War), was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, though related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. In a state of "total war", the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust (during which approximately 11 million people were killed) and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres (during which approximately one million people were killed, including the use of two nuclear weapons in combat),it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.

The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific and was already at war with the Republic of China in 1937,but the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939[6] with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states. The United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth were the only Allied forces continuing the fight against the Axis, with campaigns in North Africa and the Horn of Africa as well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history, which trapped the major part of the Axis' military forces into a War of Attrition. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.

The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, and Germany was defeated in North Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. In 1943, with a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasion of Italy which brought about Italian surrender, and Allied victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands.

The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan and invasion of Manchuria, Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. Thus ended the war in Asia, and the final destruction of the Axis bloc.

World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world. The United Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and France—became the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia and Africa began. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and to create a common identity.
Chronology
See also: Timeline of World War II
The start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931.

Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1941. This article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of the Second World War as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939.

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the formal surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); it is even claimed in some European histories that it ended on V-E Day (8 May 1945).[citation needed] A peace treaty with Japan was signed in 1951 to formally tie up any loose ends such as compensation to be paid to Allied prisoners of war who had been victims of atrocities.A treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place in 1990 and resolved other post-World War II issues.

Background
Main article: Causes of World War II
World War I had radically altered the political European map, with the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as France, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania gained territories, and new Nation states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.

Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[18] its aftermath still caused irredentist and revanchist nationalism in several European states.These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses incurred by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all of its overseas colonies, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces. In addition, the Russian Civil War had led to the creation of the Soviet Union.

The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains, however Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by Britain and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at forging Italy as a world power, promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".


The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930
In Germany, the Weimar Republic was attacked by right-wing elements such as the Freikorps and the Nazi party, resulting in events such as the Kapp Putsch and the Beer Hall Putsch. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, domestic support for Nazism and its leader Adolf Hitler rose and, in 1933, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In the aftermath of the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian single-party state led by the Nazis.

The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese communist allies.In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese Empire, which had long sought influence in Chinaas the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as a pretext to launch an invasion of Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.

Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.
Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin
On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate measure for success on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to attempt to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement. By January, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled. In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets and Poles attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia. On 4 February, US, British, and Soviet leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.

In February, the Soviets invaded Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B, while the Soviets advanced to Vienna. In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across western Germany, while Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlin in late April. The American and Soviet forces linked up on Elbe river on 25 April. On 30 April 1945, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of the Third Reich.

Several changes in leadership occurred during this period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April. Two days later, Hitler committed suicide, and was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.


The German Reichstag after its capture by the Allies, 3 June 1945
German forces surrendered in Italy on 29 April. Total and unconditional surrender was signed on 7 May, to be effective by the end of 8 May.German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.

In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and captured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war.On the night of 9–10 March, B-29 bombers of the US Army Air Forces struck Tokyo with incendiary bombs, which killed 100,000 people within a few hours. Over the next five months, American bombers firebombed 66 other Japanese cities, causing the destruction of untold numbers of buildings and the deaths of between 350,000–500,000 Japanese civilians.


Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri, 2 September 1945
In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, over-running the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May. Chinese forces started to counterattack in Battle of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American forces also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June At the same time American bombers were destroying Japanese cities, American submarines cut off Japanese imports, drastically reducing Japan's ability to supply its overseas force.

On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany,and reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces by Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction". During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.

As Japan continued to ignore the Potsdam terms issued to them on 27 July, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Like the Japanese cities previously bombed by American airmen, the US and its allies justified the atomic bombings as military necessity to avoid invading the Japanese home islands which would cost the lives of between 250,000–500,000 Allied troops and millions of Japanese troops and civilians.Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting force.The Red Army also captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war

Aftermath
Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism

Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces

Post-war Soviet territorial expansion; resulted in Central European border changes, the creation of a Communist Bloc, and start of the Cold War
The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany. The former became a neutral state, non-aligned with any political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the USSR, accordingly. A denazification program in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.

Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland, East Prussia was divided between Poland and the USSR, followed by the expulsion of the 9 million Germans from these provinces, as well as the expulsion of 3 million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany. By the 1950s, every fifth West German was a refugee from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line, from which 2 million Poles were expelled;north-east Romania parts of eastern Finland,and the three Baltic states were also incorporated into the USSR.

In an effort to maintain peace,the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, as a common standard for all member nations. The great powers that were the victors of the war—the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France—formed the permanent members of the UN's Security Council.The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.

Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent states, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republicwere created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones, accordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, Poland, Hungary, East Germany,Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Albaniabecame Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the USSR.

Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact;the long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and proxy wars.

In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administrated Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the US in the South and the Soviet Union in the North between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War.

In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 194.In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. While European colonial powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to decolonisation.

The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The US emerged much richer than any other nation; it had a baby boom and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers and it dominated the world economy.The UK and US pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany in the years 1945–1948.Due to international trade interdependencies this led to European economic stagnation and delayed European recovery for several years

Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused.The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miraclItaly also experienced an economic boom[303] and the French economy rebounded.By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin,and although it received a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country, continued relative economic decline for decades

The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.[308] Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s. China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.

History
Main articles: History of Microsoft and History of Microsoft Windows
1972–83: Founding and company beginnings
Paul Allen  and Bill Gates  on October 19, 1981, in a sea of PCs after signing a pivotal contract. IBM called Microsoft in July 1980 inquiring about programming languages for its upcoming PC line;[9]:228 after failed negotiations with another company, IBM gave Microsoft a contract to develop the OS for the new line of PCs.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion in computer programming, were seeking to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company named Traf-O-Data, which offered a rudimentary computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in computer science at the University of Washington, later dropping out of school to work at Honeywell. Gates began studies at Harvard.[11] The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's 8800 microcomputer. Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device; after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didn't actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although they developed the interpreter on a simulator and not the actual device, the interpreter worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC.:108, 112–114 They officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft," the combination of the words microprocessor and software, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article.In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft". The company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979.

Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix.However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOS's available software selection, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor.:210 The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.:232 Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in February after developing Hodgkin's disease.:231
1984–94: Windows and Office

While jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20, 1985.:242–243, 246 Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public; the ensuing rise in the stock would make an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Due to the partnership with IBM, in 1990 the Federal Trade Commission set its eye on Microsoft for possible collusion; it marked the beginning of over a decade of legal clashes with the U.S. Government. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987;:243–244 meanwhile, the company was at work on a 32-bit OS, Microsoft Windows NT, using ideas from OS/2; it shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the Win32 application programming interface (API), making porting from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows easier. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated.

In 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.[9]:301 On May 22 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 with a streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor.[23] Both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas.[24][25] Novell, a Word competitor from 1984–1986, filed a lawsuit years later claiming that Microsoft left part of its APIs undocumented in order to gain a competitive advantage.

On July 27, 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division filed a Competitive Impact Statement that said, in part: "Beginning in 1988, and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive "per processor" licenses. Under a per processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased."
1995–2005: Internet and the 32-bit era
Bill Gates giving his deposition in 1998 for the United States v. Microsoft trial. Once the U.S. Department of Justice 1993 took over from the Federal Trade Commission, a protracted legal wrangling between Microsoft and the department ensued, resulting in various settlements and possible blocked mergers. Microsoft would point to companies such as AOL-Time Warner in its defense.

Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.:20 Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN, and for OEMs Internet Explorer, a web browser. Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes because the boxes were printed before the team finished the web browser, and instead was included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and NBC Universal created a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC. Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants. In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.te:323–324

Bill Gates handed over the CEO position on January 13, 2000, to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect.:111, 228Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to, among other things, increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decry the alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, a form of digital rights management; for example the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner, but also secured against its owner as well On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft,calling the company an "abusive monopoly"; it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004.On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines under the NT codebase. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($613 million) and to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N.
2006–10: Windows Vista, mobile, and Windows 7
CEO Steve Ballmer at the MIX event in 2008. In an interview about his management style in 2005, he mentioned that his first priority was to get the people he delegates to in order. Ballmer also emphasized the need to continue pursuing new technologies even if initial attempts fail, citing the original attempts with Windows as an example.

Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, focused on features, security, and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero.Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a "Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both titles helped to produce a record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved".

2007 also saw the creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, as they followed in the steps of server companies such as Sun and IBM.

Bill Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects.Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008.On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; the same day the first store opened, Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease of use features and performance enhancements, rather than a large reworking of Windows.

As the smartphone industry boomed beginning in 2007, Microsoft struggled to keep up with its rivals Apple and Google in providing a modern smartphone operating system. As a result, in 2010, Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS; along with a new strategy in the smartphone industry that has Microsoft working more closely with smartphone manufacturers, such as Nokia, and to provide a consistent user experience across all smartphones using Microsoft's Windows Phone OS. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography and iconography, and the concept of minimalism.

Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Other founding companies include Google, HP Networking, Yahoo, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. The nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a new cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers and other networking areas.

The term BlackBerry refers to a line of wireless handheld devices and services designed and marketed by BlackBerry Limited, formerly known as Research In Motion Limited . The first BlackBerry device, an email pager, was released in 1999. The most recent BlackBerry devices are the Z3, Z30, Z10 and the newly released Passport and the Classic. The Z3, Z30 and Z10 were announced on February 2014, September 2013 and January 2013 respectively. The user interface varies by model; most had featured a physical QWERTY keyboard, while newer generations have relied on a multi-touch screen and virtual keyboard.

BlackBerry devices can record video, take photos, play music and also provide functions such as web-browsing, email messaging, instant messaging, and the multi-platform BlackBerry Messenger service.

It was one of the major smartphone vendors until 2012. The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies. As of September 2013, there were eighty-five million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide.

History[edit]

Mike Lazaridis - Founder and former co-CEO of BlackBerry
The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany.The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding. The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit.

The original BlackBerry devices, the RIM 850 and 857, used the DataTAC network. In 2003, the more commonly known convergent smartphone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services.

BlackBerry gained marketshare in the mobile industry by concentrating on email. BlackBerry began to offer email service on non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, through the proprietary BlackBerry Connect software.

The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display while newer models installed color displays. All newer models have been optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type on a keyboard. The Storm 1 and Storm 2 include a SureType keypad for typing. Originally, system navigation was achieved with the use of a scroll wheel mounted on the right side of device models prior to the 8700. The trackwheel was replaced by the trackball with the introduction of the Pearl series which allowed 4-way scrolling. The trackball was replaced by the optical trackpad with the introduction of the Curve 8500 series. Models made to use iDEN networks such as Nextel and Mike also incorporate a push-to-talk (PTT) feature, similar to a two-way radio.

On January 30, 2013, BlackBerry announced the release of the Z10 and Q10 smartphones. Both models consist of touch screens: the Z10 features an all-touch design[8] and the Q10 combines a QWERTY keyboard with touchscreen features.

During the second financial quarter of 2013, BlackBerry sold 6.8 million handsets but was lapsed by the sales of competitor Nokia's Lumia model for the first time.

On August 12, 2013, BlackBerry announced the intention to sell the company due to their increasingly unfavourable financial position and competition in the mobile industry.Largely due to lower than expected sales on the Z10, BlackBerry announced on September 20, 2013 that 4,500 full- and part-time positions (an estimated 40% of its operating staff) have been terminated and its product line has been reduced from six to four models. On September 23, 2013, Fairfax Financial, which owns a 10% equity stake in BlackBerry, made an offer to acquire BlackBerry for $4.7 billion (at $9.00 per share). Following the announcement, BlackBerry announced an acceptance of the offer provisionally but it would continue to seek other offers until November 4, 2013.

On November 4, 2013, BlackBerry replaced Thorsten Heins with new interim CEO John S. Chen, the former CEO of Sybase.On November 8, the BlackBerry board rejected proposals from several technology companies for various BlackBerry assets on grounds that a break-up did not serve the interest of all stakeholders, which include employees, customers and suppliers in addition to shareholders, said the sources, who did not want to be identified as the discussions were confidential.On November 13, 2013, Chen released an open message: "We are committed to reclaiming our success."

In early July 2014, the TechCrunch online publication published an article titled "BlackBerry Is One Of The Hottest Stocks Of 2014, Seriously", following a 50 percent rise in the company's stock—an increase that was greater than peer companies such as Apple and Google; however, an analysis of BlackBerry's financial results showed that neither revenue or profit margin were improved, but, instead, costs were markedly reduced. During the same period, BlackBerry also introduced the new "Passport" handset—consisting of a 4.5 inches (11 cm) square screen with "Full HD-class" (1,440 x 1,440) resolution and marketed to professional fields such as healthcare and architecture—promoted its Messenger app and released minor updates for the BB10 mobile operating system.

On December 17, 2014, the BlackBerry Classic was introduced, with a keyboard which many consumers preferred over the touch screen.

Hardware
Modern LTE based handhelds such as the BlackBerry Z10 have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus 1.5 GHz Dual-Core CPU and an Adreno 225 1.5-1.7 GHz GPU. GSM-based BlackBerry handhelds incorporate an ARM 7, 9 or 11 processor.Some of the BlackBerry models (Torch 9850/9860, Torch 9810, and Bold 9900/9930) have a 1.2 GHz MSM8655 Snapdragon processor, 768 MB system memory, and 8 GB of on-board storage.Entry-level models, such as the Curve 9360, feature a Marvell PXA940 clocked at 800 MHz.

Some previous BlackBerry devices, such as the Bold 9000, were equipped with Intel XScale 624 MHz processors.The Bold 9700 featured a newer version of the Bold 9000's processor but is clocked at the same speed. The Curve 8520 featured a 512 MHz processor, while BlackBerry 8000 series smartphones, such as the 8700 and the Pearl, are based on the 312 MHz ARM XScale ARMv5TE PXA900. An exception to this is the BlackBerry 8707 which is based on the 80 MHz Qualcomm 3250 chipset; this was due to the PXA900 chipset not supporting 3G networks. The 80 MHz processor in the BlackBerry 8707 meant the device was often slower to download and render web pages over 3G than the 8700 was over EDGE networks. Early BlackBerry devices, such as the BlackBerry 950, used Intel 80386-based processors.

BlackBerry's latest Flagship phone the BlackBerry Z30 based on a 5” Super AMOLED, 1280x720 resolution, at 295 ppi 24-bit color depth and powered by Quad-Graphics and Qualcomm's Dual Core 1.7 GHz MSM8960T Pro.

Software[edit]
A new operating system, BlackBerry 10, was released for two new BlackBerry models (Z10 and Q10) on January 30, 2013. At BlackBerry World 2012, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins demonstrated some of the new features of the OS, including a camera which is able to rewind frame-by-frame to allow selection of the best shot,[25] an intelligent, predictive, and adapting keyboard, and a user interface designed around the idea of "flow".[26] Apps are available for BlackBerry 10 devices through the BlackBerry World storefront.

Further information: BlackBerry 10
The previous operating system developed for older BlackBerry devices was BlackBerry OS which is a proprietary multitasking environment developed by RIM. The operating system is designed for use of input devices such as the track wheel, track ball, and track pad. The OS provides support for Java MIDP 1.0 and WAP 1.2. Previous versions allowed wireless synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange Server email and calendar, as well as with Lotus Domino email. OS 5.0 provides a subset of MIDP 2.0, and allows complete wireless activation and synchronisation with Exchange email, calendar, tasks, notes and contacts, and adds support for Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes. The BlackBerry Curve 9360, BlackBerry Torch 9810, Bold 9900/9930, Curve 9310/9320 and Torch 9850/9860 feature the most recent BlackBerry OS 7 (launched in 2011). Apps are available for these devices through BlackBerry World (which before 2013 was called BlackBerry App World).

Further information: BlackBerry OS
Third-party developers can write software using these APIs, and proprietary BlackBerry APIs as well. Any application that makes use of certain restricted functionality must be digitally signed so that it can be associated to a developer account at RIM. This signing procedure guarantees the authorship of an application but does not guarantee the quality or security of the code. RIM provides tools for developing applications and themes for BlackBerry. Applications and themes can be loaded onto BlackBerry devices through BlackBerry World, Over The Air (OTA) through the BlackBerry mobile browser, or through BlackBerry Desktop Manager.

BlackBerry devices use the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger, also known as BBM, software for sending and receiving encrypted instant messages, voice notes, images and videos via BlackBerry PIN. As long as your cell phone has a data plan these messages are all free of charge. Some of the features of BBM include groups, bar-code scanning, lists, shared calendars, BBM Music and integration with apps and games using the BBM social platform.

In April 2013, BlackBerry announced that it was in the process of shutting down its streaming music service BBM Music, which was active for almost two years since its launch. BlackBerry Messenger Music closed on June 2, 2013.

In July 2014, Blackberry revealed Blackberry Assistant, a new feature for BlackBerry OS 10.3, and BlackBerry Passport hardware. The feature is a digital personal assistant to help keep you "organized, informed and productive."

In December 2014, BlackBerry and NantHealth, a healthcare-focused data provider, launched a secure cancer genome browser, giving doctors the ability to access patients' genetic data on the BlackBerry Passport smartphone.

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955), popularly known as Bill Gates, is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor.Gates originally established his reputation as the co-founder of Microsoft, the world’s largest PC software company, with Paul Allen. Since then he has served as a long term CEO and chairman of the company.

Today he is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest peopleand was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014 — excluding a few brief periods post-2008. Between 2009 and 2014 his wealth more than doubled from $40 billion to more than $82 billion. Between 2013 and 2014 his wealth increased by $15 billion, or around $1.5 billionmore than the entire GDP of Iceland in 2014.

During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, he was also the largest individual shareholder up until May 2014.He has also authored and co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by judicial courts.In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie (who has since left Microsoft), chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Early life

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, in an upper-middle-class family, the son of William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His ancestral origin includes English, German, and Scots-Irish.His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix. Early on in his life, Gates's parents had a law career in mind for him.[19] When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Protestant Congregational church. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock ... there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing".

At 13, he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students.Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine."After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in Cobol, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with "a disproportionate number of interesting girls."He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973 and was a National Merit Scholar.He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SATand enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who would later succeed Gates as CEO of Microsoft.
The Poker Room in Currier House at Harvard University, where Gates and Allen formed Microsoft

In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problemspresented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years;its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

After being named one of Good Housekeeping '​s "50 Most Eligible Bachelors" in 1985, Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996) and Phoebe Adele (b. 2002), and son Rory John (b. 1999). The family resides in the Gates's home, an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates stated in regard to his faith:

    The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.

In the same interview, Gates said: "I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know."

Gates's 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m2) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m2) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m2) dining room.

Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.

Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call Gates a "centibillionaire".Despite his wealth and extensive business travel Gates usually flew coach until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person behind Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013 according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List.Carlos Slim retook the position again in June 2014.

Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667.He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.

Around the 1990s, Gates spoke at a high school about "the eleven rules of life," aimed at high school and college graduates. The rules have since been repeated in schools across the world, with the purpose of educating students on how to be successful in their future. Although the rules are commonly attributed to Gates, it is actually originally written by educator Charles Sykes in his book "Dumbing Down on Our Kids," written in 1996.
Philanthropy
Gates with Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Umaru Yar'Adua of Nigeria and others during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland
Main article: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the "William H. Gates Foundation." In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations to create the charitable "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation," which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013 as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than US$34.6 billion.The Foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.

Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over US$28 billion to charity;[96] the couple plan to eventually donate 95 percent of their wealth to charity.

On August 15, 2014, Bill Gates posted a video of himself dumping a bucket of ice water on his head, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg challenged him to do so, in order to raise awareness for ALS.

Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool developed by Adobe Systems. Dreamweaver was created by Macromedia in 1997, and was maintained by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.

Adobe Dreamweaver is available for OS X and for Windows.

Following Adobe's acquisition of the Macromedia product suite, releases of Dreamweaver subsequent to version 8.0 have been more compliant with W3C standards. Recent versions have improved support for Web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting languages and frameworks including ASP (ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript, ASP.NET C#, ASP.NET VB), ColdFusion, Scriptlet, and PHP.

Features

Adobe Dreamweaver is a web design and development application that provides a visual WYSIWYG editor (colloquially referred to as the Design view) and a code editor with standard features such as syntax highlighting, code completion, and code collapsing as well as more sophisticated features such as real-time syntax checking and code introspection for generating code hints to assist the user in writing code. The Design view facilitates rapid layout design and code generation as it allows users to create and manipulate the layout of HTML elements. Dreamweaver features an integrated browser for previewing developed webpages in the program's own preview pane in addition to allowing content to be open in locally installed web browsers. It provides transfer and synchronization features, the ability to find and replace lines of text or code by search terms or regular expressions across the entire site, and a templating feature that allows single-source update of shared code and layout across entire sites without server-side includes or scripting.

Dreamweaver, like other HTML editors, edits files locally then uploads them to the remote web server using FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV. Dreamweaver CS4 now supports the Subversion (SVN) version control system.

Language availability

Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 is available in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean (Windows only), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
Specific features for Arabic and Hebrew languages

The older Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 also features a Middle Eastern version that allows typing Arabic, Persian, Urdu or Hebrew text (written from right to left) within the code view. Whether the text is fully Middle Eastern (written from right to left) or includes both English and Middle Eastern text (written left to right and right to left), it will be displayed properly.

http://icccricketworldcupp2015.blogspot.com/
The 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the 11th ICC Cricket World Cup, scheduled to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand from 14 February to 29 March 2015. 49 matches will be played in 14 venues with Australia staging 26 games at grounds in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney while New Zealand hosts 23 games in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Napier, Nelson and Wellington.The final match of the tournament will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It will be one of the world's largest international sports tournaments, with 14 competing teams and more than 400 accredited players and officials taking part in it.

The hosting rights were awarded at the same time as those of the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, which Australia and New Zealand had originally bid to host, and the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, which was awarded to England. The 2011 tournament was awarded to the four Asian Test cricket playing countries, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, in a 10 to 3 vote (Pakistan later lost the co-hosting rights due to a terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team). The International Cricket Council were sufficiently impressed with the trans-Tasman bid that it was decided to award the next World Cup to Australia and New Zealand.This is the second time that the tournament will be held in Australia and New Zealand, with the first being the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Sachin Tendulkar has been named as the 2015 Cricket World Cup Ambassador by the ICC for the second time, after 2011 Cricket World Cup where he was the ambassador.

India are the defending champions, having won the tournament in 2011 when it was held in the Indian subcontinent, defeating Sri Lanka in the finals by 6 wickets. Tickets for the Pool B match between India and Pakistan scheduled on 15 February 2015, were reportedly sold out within 12 minutes.

Host selection
Bids

The ICC announced the previous edition, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup hosts, on 30 April 2006. Australian and New Zealand had also bid for the tournament and a successful Australasian bid for the 2011 World Cup would have seen a 50–50 split in games, with the final still up for negotiation. The Trans-Tasman bid, Beyond Boundaries, was the only bid for 2011 delivered to the ICC headquarters at Dubai before 1 March deadline. Considerable merits of the bid included the superior venues and infrastructure, and the total support of the Australian and New Zealand governments on tax and custom issues during the tournament, according to Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. The New Zealand government had also assured that the Zimbabwean team would be allowed to take part in the tournament after political discussions about whether their team would be allowed to tour Zimbabwe in 2005.

ICC President Ehsan Mani said that the extra time required by the Asian block to hand over its bid had harmed the four-nation bid. However, when it came to the voting, the Asians won by seven votes to four; according to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), it was the vote of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) that turned the matter. It was reported in Pakistani newspaper Dawn that the Asian countries promised to hold fund-raising events for West Indian cricket during the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, which may have influenced the vote.[9] However, I.S. Bindra, chairman of the monitoring committee of the Asian bid, denied that, saying that it was their promise of extra profits of US$400 million that swung the vote in their way.

The ICC was so impressed by the efficiency of the Trans-Tasman bid that they decided to award the next World Cup, to be held in 2015, to them.

Australia and New Zealand last jointly hosted the ICC Cricket World Cup in 1992.

Format

The tournament will feature 14 teams, the same number as the 2011 World Cup, giving associate and affiliate member nations a chance to participate.

The format is the same as the 2011 edition: 14 teams will take part in the initial stages, divided into two groups of seven; the seven teams play each other once before the top four teams from each group qualify for the quarter-finals. The format ensures that each team gets to play a minimum of six matches even if they exit in the group stage.

Qualification

Highlighted are the countries to participate in the 2015 Cricket World Cup.
  Qualified as full member of ICC
  Qualified via WCL or qualifier
  Participate in qualifier but failed to qualify
Main articles: 2011–13 ICC World Cricket League Championship and 2014 Cricket World Cup Qualifier
Per ICC regulations, the 10 ICC full member nations qualify for the tournament automatically. Immediately after the 2011 World Cup, it was decided that the next tournament would be reduced to only feature the 10 full members.[14] This was met with heavy criticism from a number of associate nations, especially from the Ireland cricket team, who had performed well in 2007 and 2011. Following support shown by the ICC Cricket Committee for a qualification process,[15] the ICC retracted their decision in June 2011 and decided that 14 teams will participate in the 2015 World Cup, including four associate or affiliate member nations.

At the ICC Chief Executives' Committee meeting in September 2011, the ICC decided on a new qualifying format. The top two teams of the 2011–13 ICC World Cricket League Championship qualify directly. The remaining six teams join the third and fourth-placed teams of 2011 ICC World Cricket League Division Two and the top two teams of 2013 ICC World Cricket League Division Three in a 10-team World Cup Qualifier to decide the remaining two places.

On 9 July 2013, as a result of a tied match against Netherlands, Ireland became the first country to qualify for the 2015 World Cup.[19] On 4 October 2013, Afghanistan qualified for their first Cricket World Cup after beating Kenya to finish in second place behind Ireland.

Scotland defeated the United Arab Emirates in the final of the 2014 Cricket World Cup Qualifier and both teams qualified for the last 2 spots in the 2015 Cricket World cup.