Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, alongside Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski, spoke with CNBC Business News’ Scott Wapner today regarding a variety of subjects, including Microsoft’s Zune and Apple’s iPhone and iPod:
Wapner: Steve, let me ask you about the iPhone and the Zune, if I may. The Zune was getting some traction and Steve Jobs goes to Macworld and he pulls out this iPhone. What was your first reaction when you saw that?
Ballmer: (laughs) $500 full-subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine. Now, it may sell very well or not, I, you know. We have our strategy, we’ve got great Windows Mobile devices in the market today, we, you can get a Motorola Q phone now for $99, it’s a very capable machine, it’ll do music, it’ll do, uh, Internet, it’ll do email, it’ll do instant messaging. So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.
Wapner: How do you compete with that though? He sucked out a lot of the spotlight in the last few weeks because of what happened at Macworld, not only with the iPhone, but with the new iPod. How do you compete with that, with the Zune?
Ballmer: Right now, well, let’s take phones first. Right now we’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year, Apple is selling zero phones a year (half smile). In six months, they’ll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace (laughs) and let’s see (shrugs), you know, eh, what’s the expression, let’s see how the competition goes. In the case of music and entertainment players, Apple ob.., uh, absolutely has a preeminent position. We said we wanna be in this market, there’s a lot of reasons why there’s synergy with other things that we’re doing, we think we’ve got some unique innovations – particularly what we’re doing with community, with wireless networking. And, we came into the market, a market in which they are very strong, and we took, I don’t know, but I think most estimates would say we took about 20-25% of the high end of the market. We weren’t down at some of the lower price points, but for devices $249 and over we took, you know, let’s say about 20% of the market. So, I feel like we’re in the game, we’re driving our innovation hard, uh, and, uh, okay, we’re not the incumbent, he’s the incumbent in this game, but, uh, at the end of the day, he’s going to have to keep up, uh, an agenda that we’re gonna drive as well.
Wapner: You still feel like you can be very competitive in that space?
Ballmer: Sure. Absolutely. If we didn’t think there was transformation going on, we woudn’t be playing.
Full CNBC video: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=167100574
MacDailyNews Take: It is very evident that Ballmer has nothing. That he goes straight into FUD mode with the outright lie that Apple’s iPhone is “the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace” shows fear. Apple’s iPhone does have a keyboard, of course, as Ballmer probably knows full well; maybe not, as he seems to lack understanding about prices, DMP market share, and more.
Microsoft’s Zune is a primitive device to begin with; next to an iPhone, it is even more of a joke than it is now, if that’s possible. Today’s so-called “smartphones” with Windows Mobile and other operating systems look like last decade’s technology next to Apple’s iPhone.
Ballmer can bluster all he likes with nonsense such as “we’re driving our innovation hard” and babbling about some unknown “agenda” that Microsoft’s supposedly “gonna drive,” but he has nothing of substance to offer.
Microsoft should be embarrassed at their total lack of innovation and Microsoft should be embarrassed that they even have Steve Ballmer as an employee, much less as their CEO.
Related articles:
The massive FUD campaign against Apple’s iPhone ramps up – January 10, 2007
The Motley Fool: Apple makes Microsoft’s Zune a paperweight – January 10, 2007
RealMoney’s Comeau predicts: ‘Microsoft will kill the first Zune media player by midyear’ – December 16, 2006
Microsoft Zune plummets to 5th place in U.S. digital media player market share with 2.1 percent – December 04, 2006
I saw a Zune in person for the first time a few weeks ago…it has got to be the ugliest, most crass consumer electronic device I’ve ever seen. The first-gen iPod is classier than that piece of junk. I wouldn’t even want to be seen holding one.
Jobs is a genius. He’s convinced MonkeyBoy that the iPhone is competing with his Motorola Q. In fact, it’s competing with UMPCs, which cost between $1000 and $2000. Who’s the idiot now?
Ballmer’s an idiot. Most expensive phone? Has the fool seen what smarthpones cost? Has he seen what some Nokia and Sony/Eriksson phones cost? They go for as high as $800!
The man wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the butt.
Bozo
Just wait until the true video iPod comes out in a few weeks, with the same touch-screen as the iPhone, sells for $300, is 120MB or more, smaller and thinner than even the Brown Zune.
I think Ballmer meant 20% of the non-iPod $249 and above high-end MP3 player market. He just couldn’t remember all of those conditions.
It’s good to hear Ballmer claiming that Zune accounts for 20% of the upper end of the MP3 player market.
As Apple have sold 21 million players in the last quarter, let’s guess that maybe 25% of them are upper end models, so that’s about 5 million.
Therefore in order to reach 20% of just the iPod market, Zune will have sold a million units, which Microsoft weren’t expecting to do before June 2007.
I’m astonished that Ballmer didn’t highlight this amazing achievement. Or is he just a pathetic liar who is too stupid to consider whether his lies are remotely plausible ?
Ballmer is awesome. Think of boring life would be without him.
insert a “how” somewhere in the above post
What can brown do for you? Squirt, baby, Squirt.
I really hope that he believes what he’s saying. If so, Apple should have little problem competing with MS
um…i do have to agree with Ballmer…it’s one hell of an expensive phone.
it’s an iPod too, though….
MDN: “stay,” as in “Sit, Ballmer! Staaaaay! Stay! Good dog!”
Alright Young Frankenstein’s Monster, let Apple talk about innovation, and you get back to singing “Puttin’ On The Ritz”, huh?
Balmer originally used the reason, that people wouldn’t want to walk around with seperate devices in their pockets, for disliking the iPod. Now that Apple has actually made what seems like the perfect device for Steve Balmer, he’s pretty damn screwed 😀
I do not feel sorry for him.. I feel sorry for his kids!
I have personally only seen two, yes that’s right 2, people with Zunes out in public, so I don’t know how they got 20 percent of the high-end music player market.
OAN, I didn’t know that Microsoft sold phones, I thought Motorola did. It is the Motorola Q running Microsoft Windows Mobile, right? Talk about misleading statements!
MW=”body” as in get M$ a body bag, they’re dead
I say we all chip in and get a nice collar and leash for him so Bill can reign him in. A choke collar would be nice. Or maybe one of those collars that delivers a mild shock. That way, everytime he starts to rattle off his phoney baloney platitudes Bill can be sitting in his office and press the big red button. It would be a joy to watch THAT TV interview.
Microsoft makes a lot of money. Filthy, obscene amounts of money. Name me one human entity be it corporation, religion, Icon , mullah ….etc that is embarrassed about making lots of money. MDN you fling the wrong shame upon the 800lb gorilla. They should be ashamed of the quality of most of their products innovation aside. If Ballmer wants to laugh at the most expensive phone… how about the most expensive bloatware on the planet the Microsoft Works suite
Didn’t anybody else notice?
Just look at his eyes!
It’s paranoia pure!
His eyes are burning during the whole interview.
Maybe a dumb question, but how does M$ profit from the “…milions and millions and millions of phones…” being sold per year?
I love the fact that Ballmer blasts Apple for offering a high-end phone that is too expensive to succeed, and then goes on to boast that the expensive Zune is successful because it is placed at the high end of the market.
This guy went to Harvard?
Yep KenC, Ballmer just lost and monkeyboy doesn’t even realize it. Ultra-Mobile PCs it would seem have been eliminated with the advent of the iPhone. And then Apple can always do a cheaper Shuffle-like version of the iPhone as a straight phone avec iPod. The versatility of the iPhone is yet to be fully utilized—it may prove to be another iPod phenomenon.
I wish guys like Thurrot would quote the marketshare numbers “FOR THE SEGMENT APPLE IS INTERESTED IN”
If they did, it’d be about 30% lol
Ballmer is perhaps the most incomprehensible and ineloquent to ever be the CEO of a large corporation. It’s really sad that he is their #1 guy.
Oh dear what an ass. “we’ve got some unique innovations – particularly what we’re doing with community, with wireless networking”. In case you hadn’t noticed the iPhone has wireless built in that can actually be used for something more than squirting brown crap to another non-existent ZuneTurd. You are a bum. But I like you. You make me laugh for hours fat boy.
The whole time I was wtching that I kept thinking Steve C from “the office”
Medic !!!
Mr Balmer’s meds are wearing off, hurry
Scrolling down a long list of comments, I have to ask — where is the normal beFUDdled support from ZuneTang?