Item 4. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES

Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, we have evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as required by Exchange Act Rule 13a-15(b) as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on that evaluation, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that these disclosure controls and procedures are effective. There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended December 31, 2023 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

PART II

Item 1, 1A

PART II. OTHER INFORMATION

ITEM 1. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Refer to Note 14 – Contingencies of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part I, Item 1 of this Form 10-Q) for information regarding legal proceedings in which we are involved.

ITEM 1A. RI****SK FACTORS

Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and the trading price of our common stock.

STRATEGIC AND COMPETITIVE RISKS

We face intense competition across all markets for our products and services, which may lead to lower revenue or operating margins.

Competition in the technology sector

Our competitors range in size from diversified global companies with significant research and development resources to small, specialized firms whose narrower product lines may let them be more effective in deploying technical, marketing, and financial resources. Barriers to entry in many of our businesses are low and many of the areas in which we compete evolve rapidly with changing and disruptive technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of new products and services. Our ability to remain competitive depends on our success in making innovative products, devices, and services that appeal to businesses and consumers.

Competition among platform-based ecosystems

An important element of our business model has been to create platform-based ecosystems on which many participants can build diverse solutions. A well-established ecosystem creates beneficial network effects among users, application developers, and the platform provider that can accelerate growth. Establishing significant scale in the marketplace is necessary to achieve and maintain attractive margins. We face significant competition from firms that provide competing platforms.

A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls the software and hardware elements of a product and related services, has succeeded with some consumer products such as personal computers, tablets, phones, gaming consoles, wearables, and other endpoint devices. Competitors pursuing this model also earn revenue from services integrated with the hardware and software platform, including applications and content sold through their integrated marketplaces. They may also be able to claim security and performance benefits from their vertically integrated offer. We also offer some vertically-integrated hardware and software products and services. To the extent we shift a portion of our business to a vertically integrated model we increase our cost of revenue and reduce our operating margins.

We derive substantial revenue from licenses of Windows operating systems on PCs. We face significant competition from competing platforms developed for new devices and form factors such as smartphones and tablet computers. These devices compete on multiple bases including price and the perceived utility of the device and its platform. Users are increasingly turning to these devices to perform functions that in the past were performed by personal computers. Even if many users view these devices as complementary to a personal computer, the prevalence of these devices may make it more difficult to attract application developers to our PC operating system platforms. Competing with operating systems licensed at low or no cost may decrease our PC operating system margins. Popular products or services offered on competing platforms could increase their competitive strength. In addition, some of our devices compete with products made by our original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.

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Competing platforms have content and application marketplaces with scale and significant installed bases. The variety and utility of content and applications available on a platform are important to device purchasing decisions. Users may incur costs to move data and buy new content and applications when switching platforms. To compete, we must successfully enlist developers to write applications for our platform and ensure that these applications have high quality, security, customer appeal, and value. Efforts to compete with competitors’ content and application marketplaces may increase our cost of revenue and lower our operating margins. Competitors’ rules governing their content and applications marketplaces may restrict our ability to distribute products and services through them in accordance with our technical and business model objectives.

Business model competition

Companies compete with us based on a growing variety of business models.

Even as we transition more of our business to infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service business model, the license-based proprietary software model generates a substantial portion of our software revenue. We bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from licensing our products. Many of our competitors also develop and sell software to businesses and consumers under this model.

We are investing in artificial intelligence (“AI”) across the entire company and infusing generative AI capabilities into our consumer and commercial offerings. We expect AI technology and services to be a highly competitive and rapidly evolving market. We will bear significant development and operational costs to build and support the AI capabilities, products, and services necessary to meet the needs of our customers. To compete effectively we must also be responsive to technological change, potential regulatory developments, and public scrutiny.

Other competitors develop and offer free applications, online services, and content, and make money by selling third-party advertising. Advertising revenue funds development of products and services these competitors provide to users at no or little cost, competing directly with our revenue-generating products.

Some companies compete with us by modifying and then distributing open source software at little or no cost to end users, using open source AI models, and earning revenue on advertising or integrated products and services. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the open source products. Some open source products mimic the features and functionality of our products.

The competitive pressures described above may cause decreased sales volumes, price reductions, and/or increased operating costs, such as for research and development, marketing, and sales incentives. This may lead to lower revenue, gross margins, and operating income.

Our focus on cloud-based services presents execution and competitive risks. A growing part of our business involves cloud-based services available across the spectrum of computing devices. Our strategic vision is to compete and grow by building best-in-class platforms and productivity services that utilize ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence to drive insights and productivity gains. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services for consumers and business customers. Pricing and delivery models are evolving. Devices and form factors influence how users access services in the cloud and sometimes the user’s choice of which cloud-based services to use. Certain industries and customers have specific requirements for cloud services and may present enhanced risks. We are devoting significant resources to develop and deploy our cloud-based strategies. The Windows ecosystem must continue to evolve with this changing environment. We embrace cultural and organizational changes to drive accountability and eliminate obstacles to innovation. Our intelligent cloud and intelligent edge offerings are connected to the growth of the Internet of Things (“IoT”), a network of distributed and interconnected devices employing sensors, data, and computing capabilities, including AI. Our success in driving ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence will depend on the level of adoption of our offerings such as Azure, Azure AI, and Azure IoT Edge. We may not establish market share sufficient to achieve scale necessary to meet our business objectives.

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Besides software development costs, we are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing and AI services. These costs will reduce the operating margins we have previously achieved. Whether we succeed in cloud-based services depends on our execution in several areas, including:

Continuing to bring to market compelling cloud-based experiences that generate increasing traffic and market share.

Maintaining the utility, compatibility, and performance of our cloud-based services on the growing array of computing devices, including PCs, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other devices, as well as sensors and other IoT endpoints.

Continuing to enhance the attractiveness of our cloud platforms to third-party developers.

Ensuring our cloud-based services meet the reliability expectations of our customers and maintain the security of their data as well as help them meet their own compliance needs.

Making our suite of cloud-based services platform-agnostic, available on a wide range of devices and ecosystems, including those of our competitors.

It is uncertain whether our strategies will attract the users or generate the revenue required to succeed. If we are not effective in executing organizational and technical changes to increase efficiency and accelerate innovation, or if we fail to generate sufficient usage of our new products and services, we may not grow revenue in line with the infrastructure and development investments described above. This may negatively impact gross margins and operating income.

Some users may engage in fraudulent or abusive activities through our cloud-based services. These include unauthorized use of accounts through stolen credentials, use of stolen credit cards or other payment vehicles, failure to pay for services accessed, or other activities that violate our terms of service such as cryptocurrency mining or launching cyberattacks. If our efforts to detect such violations or our actions to control these types of fraud and abuse are not effective, we may experience adverse impacts to our revenue or incur reputational damage.

RISKS RELATING TO THE EVOLUTION OF OUR BUSINESS

We make significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns. We will continue to make significant investments in research, development, and marketing for existing products, services, and technologies, including the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365, Bing, SQL Server, Windows Server, Azure, Office 365, Xbox, LinkedIn, and other products and services. In addition, we are focused on developing new AI platform services and incorporating AI into existing products and services. We also invest in the development and acquisition of a variety of hardware for productivity, communication, and entertainment, including PCs, tablets, gaming devices, and HoloLens. Investments in new technology are speculative. Commercial success depends on many factors, including innovativeness, developer support, and effective distribution and marketing. If customers do not perceive our latest offerings as providing significant new functionality or other value, they may reduce their purchases of new software and hardware products or upgrades, unfavorably affecting revenue. We may not achieve significant revenue from new product, service, and distribution channel investments for several years, if at all. New products and services may not be profitable, and even if they are profitable, operating margins for some new products and businesses will not be as high as the margins we have experienced historically. We may not get engagement in certain features, like Microsoft Edge, Bing, and Copilot, that drive post-sale monetization opportunities. Our data handling practices across our products and services will continue to be under scrutiny. Perceptions of mismanagement, driven by regulatory activity or negative public reaction to our practices or product experiences, could negatively impact product and feature adoption, product design, and product quality.

Developing new technologies is complex. It can require long development and testing periods. Significant delays in new releases or significant problems in creating new products or services could adversely affect our revenue.

PART II