MICROSOFT
DESCRIPTION
Microsoft's ambitions are anything but small. The world's #1 software company provides a variety of products and services, including its Windows operating systems and Office software suite. The company has expanded into markets such as video game consoles, servers and storage software, and digital music players. Microsoft has reached settlements to end a slew of antitrust investigations and lawsuits, including agreeing to uniformly license its operating systems and allowing manufacturers to include competing software with Windows. In early 2008 the company made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for about $44.6 billion; Yahoo!'s board rejected the bid as "inadequate".
SONY
DESCRIPTION
All eyes are on Sony -- or, more likely, on its high-profit PlayStation home video game systems. While PlayStation ousted Nintendo from the top spot in the game market in the mid-1990s, the release of PlayStation3 in late 2006 was disappointing. Sony, one of the world's top consumer electronics firms, also makes a host of other products, including digital and video cameras, Walkman stereos, and semiconductors; these products account for nearly two-thirds of the company's sales. Sony's entertainment assets include music (Sony BMG Music and Epic), motion pictures (Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Pictures Digital), DVDs (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), and TV programming (Sony Pictures Television).