Microsoft's yearly sales and marketing spending 2000-2020

In fiscal year 2020, Microsoft Corporation spent 19.6 billion U.S. dollars on sales and marketing, the company’s highest annual expenditure to date. In the past decade, Microsoft has slowly increased sales and marketing spending, with the annual figure rising by nearly five billion U.S. dollars during that time. Another of Microsoft’s major yearly expenditures is research and development, which also regularly amounts to well over ten billion U.S. dollars in recent years.

Microsoft Corporation

Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, Microsoft has since grown into one of the most successful tech firms in the world and has experienced decades of continued success. The company’s famous Windows operating system, its lines of consumer electronics, and its popular software packages such as Microsoft Office have become widely popular for both business and personal usage. Continuously innovating and adapting, Microsoft has more recently begun to offer new services such as cloud computing, which has become a major revenue earner for the company.

Tech Industry

As technology becomes further integrated into nearly all aspects of daily life, companies such as Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft have grown into some of the most powerful entities in the world. Spending in the IT industry alone amounts to trillions of dollars each year and shows no sign of slowing down, meaning that these tech giants are well positioned for continued success.