Report: Microsoft Marketing Bans Purchase of Apple Products
An Apple a day? Not at Microsoft.
When it comes to the PC game, Apple is Microsoft's biggest rival. And, with Windows 8 set to hit tablets later this year and Windows Phone already well established, Microsoft is finding itself competing with Apple in more ways than one. So, it stands to reason that Microsoft wouldn't want employees using company funds to purchase Apple products, right? According to Mary Jo Foley's All About Microsoft blog, Microsoft's sales and marketing organization has apparently put the kibosh on purchasing Apple-branded equipment (specifically Macs and iPads) with company funds.
The following email was apparently sent around this day last week and details the new policy:
From: Alain Crozier
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 1:17 PMSubject: Apple Purchases
Within SMSG we are putting in place a new policy that says that Apple products (Mac & iPad) should not be purchased with company funds.
In the US we will be turning off the Apple products from the Zones Catalog next week, which is the standard purchasing mechanism for these products.
Outside of the US — we will work with your finance and procurement teams to send the right message and put the right processes in place.
The current purchase levels are low, however we recognize there will be a bit of transition work associated with this. Details of historical purchases in the US are provided in the attachment to help understand the changes that will be needed.Thank you for your support and leadership on this.
Alain Crozier
CFO | WW Sales, Marketing & Services Group
WW SMSG Finance
Microsoft hasn't commented on the email's authenticity (in fact, Foley says the company has refused to comment at all), but it's not really all that surprising if it does end up being true. It's not at all uncommon for companies to distribute their own products for business use among employees and it's not as though they're banning staff from owning any Apple products at all. Still, to actually come out and ban Apple products may seem like a drastic move to some.
If Apple products have been banned, they certainly lasted a lot longer at Microsoft than in the Gates' household. Three years back, in 2009, the wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates revealed that iPods and iPhones were among the banned items not allowed in their house.

Personally if I worked for MS and brought in an iPad or something, I'd feel stupid/embarrassed/ashamed even if I liked the product more than what my company offered. It'd just seem weird... at least IMO
Personally if I worked for MS and brought in an iPad or something, I'd feel stupid/embarrassed/ashamed even if I liked the product more than what my company offered. It'd just seem weird... at least IMO
Apple is about to launch an office suite on macs. They will ban Microsoft from their hardware.
Silverlight is dead. WP7 is dying.
Windows is moving to a place where it's opponents have much better weapons (Metro). Metro will only make Windows's users ready to jump to another OS (on the desktop/laptop). THEY ARE IN FACT PUSHING THEIR OWN DEATH.
This strategy is silly ... and I'm not even sad.
The public face of M$, however, has to look mean and tough. No girlie crApple products allowed.
M$ employees are obviously buying them because they like them better. Don't ban them, just make something better.
Or is that too obvious?
They use chrome books, but windows mostly except when coding related to android in which case they use linux of some form (hence why the SDK comes out on linux before other OS's).
They can't. Isn't that obvious?
Although I feel all MS employees directly involved with the creation of their products should use Macs, iDevices and Android devices on the side atleast a little to get a feel for what does and does not work in their competitors products. That way they can take their products in the right direction and sort of learn from their competitions mistakes.
I think they have a combination of Mac, Windows, and Linux. That makes sense, given they want to be fair (for instance, making Motorola, which they own, bid along with all the other device manufacturers for android stuff) and they don't have any desktop OSes anyway (and chromebooks are useless for actual work).