Mr Microsoft must be feeling the holiday cheer early this year. Windows 8 is about to be released and to celebrate Microsoft is going to be generous with over 90,000 employees. In a weird way this is a bit of a make or break year for Microsoft. The world is changing and the ultimate adapter (Microsoft) has got to once again re-invent itself. We have seen this with the release of the Microsoft Surface tablet PC. Aside from the xbox and a few peripherals, Microsoft tends to stay away from building hardware.
However as I said the earlier the world is changing and it is changing fast. The rise of the tablet PC in 2012 has been faster than many pundits predicted and lets face it Microsoft has not kept 
up. Both Google’s Android and Apples IOS on its iPad and iPhone range have well and truely jumped ahead. Apple being the obvious jewel in the market. World wide tablet shipments in the second quarter of 2012 was 25 million units and Apple shipped 17 million iPads, upping its share to 68.2%. A great result in anyone’s language. So what better way to start the new ball rolling than for Microsoft to give every one of it’s employee a Windows 8 tablet or phone to help spread the love.
Cheryl Platz from Microsoft tweeted “Great Microsoft company meeting, even ignoring my onstage cameo and Ballmer’s generous Oprah-style hardware giveaways to all employees. 
” . A fabulous result for the Microsoft employees involved and a great way to get some love passed out into the public arena. We are constantly hearing about how Google treats its employees. It is part of Google’s image and with the successful release of the Nexus 7, Microsoft could do a lot worse than trying to emulate some of the feel good marketing that Google seems to be so good at. Contrary to Google, Apple has not such a great reputation world wide in the way it treats it’s employees, although US employees seem to be treated quite well. So who knows this may be an attempt to come across as the friendlier and better Microsoft. If nothing else, Microsoft now has an extra 94,000 sales and marketing staff push their products and that can only be a good thing!
