Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard For Business Keyboard and Keypad Set

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably.

Corporations are distinct from with sole proprietors and partnerships. They are separate legal entities and provide limited liability for their owners and members. They are subject to corporate tax rates. They are also more complicated and expensive to set up, but offer more protection and benefits for the owners and members.

A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric input such as calculators, television remotes, push-button telephones, vending machines, ATMs, point of sale terminals, combination locks, safes, and digital door locks. Many devices follow the E.161 standard for their arrangement.

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, the Azure cloud computing platform and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world's largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta (parent company of Facebook).

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made several corporate acquisitions, the largest being the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in October 2023, followed by its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, and its acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.

As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops, laptops, tabs, gadgets, and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software development (Visual Studio).

Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy. This unfolded with Microsoft acquiring Danger Inc. in 2008, entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers, and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach their highest value since December 1999. Under Nadella's direction, the company has also heavily expanded its gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022, dedicated to operating Xbox in addition to its three subsidiaries (publishers). Microsoft Gaming is the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue as of 2024.

In 2018, Microsoft became the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, a position it has repeatedly traded with Apple in the years since. In April 2019, Microsoft reached a trillion-dollar market cap, becoming the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion after Apple and Amazon, respectively. As of 2024, Microsoft has the third-highest global brand valuation.

Microsoft has been criticized for its monopolistic practices and the company's software has been criticized for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security.

Microsoft is one of only two U.S.-based companies that has a prime credit rating of AAA.

Sculpt may be:

• a verb meaning 'to sculpture'
• the name of a 2016 film