Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
industries was created due to lost customers whose calls were being
routed to a competitor by a live telephone operator.
The modern telecommunications industry employs millions of
workers in every country in the world. It is one of the largest and
most sophisticated industries in terms of computer and software us-
age and also in total software personnel. It is also an industry with
many large companies in many countries: Alcatel, Apple, AT&T,
Bell Northern, Ericsson, GTE, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, Nokia,
Samsung, and Siemens are only a few examples.
Intuit
Intuit is a very rare example of a small company competing successfully with Mi-
crosoft. In fact, Microsoft even withdrew from the personal finance market space
partly due to the success of Intuit. The failure of Microsoft Money to compete
with Intuit Quicken is a very rare example of a small company taking market share
from Microsoft.
This company was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proult in Palo Alto,
California, in the midst of Silicon Valley, although legally it is a Delaware corpor-
ation. The first product of Intuit was its flagship application Quicken, which is a
personal financial package that keeps checkbooks balanced and can handle other
personal finances such as those generated by rental properties. The IBM personal
computer version was written in BASIC and the Apple version was written in Pas-
cal.
There were competitive products early on, but by 1988, Quicken was the top-
selling personal finance tool. In 1991, Microsoft decided to compete in this space
and brought out Microsoft Money.
Intuit had a successful IPO in 1993 and began to acquire companies in related
fields such as income tax preparation, including the well-known TurboTax. In
1994, Microsoft approached Intuit about acquisition, but the Department of Justice
stopped the merger on the grounds that it might create a monopoly. That left Mi-
crosoft and Quicken as the top competitors in a narrow niche.
Intuit is primarily a commercial vendor in the finance and tax areas. It also has
some free services, some of which have received favorable reviews. Intuit has an
online research application dealing with taxation called the Tax Almanac that was
launched in 2005. Articles and materials are prepared by tax professionals and are
available free to academics and other tax preparation groups, as well as to con-
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