During a dinner Thursday at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley when “asked about smartphones, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Nokia, Research in Motion and Apple will all lose out as the market expands over the next five years, because they design their own proprietary hardware and tie it closely to their software,” James Niccolai reports for IDG News Service.
“Nokia leads the smartphone market today with about a 30 percent share, he said. ‘If you want to reach more than that, you have to separate the hardware and software in the platform,’ he said,” Niccolai reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Like with PlaysForSure vs. iPod+iTunes?
“In other words, he thinks the same strategy that helped Microsoft become the leader on the desktop — licensing its OS for use by other hardware makers — will let it win out on smartphones. Long term, he said, the battle will be between the Symbian OS (which is now open source), mobile versions of Linux and Windows Mobile,” Niccolai reports.
MacDailyNews Take: What allowed Microsoft to take the PC market was the absence of Steve Jobs at Apple combined with the one-time luxury of a poorly written contract signed by an unprepared sugared water salesbozo which allowed them to poorly rip-off Apple’s Mac ad infinitum. Microsoft will not have the same luxury this time. Apple has over 200 iPhone-related patents that Steve Jobs has publicly-stated Apple plans to vigorously defend.
We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007
Niccolai continues, “Apple won’t boost its share of the personal computer market or become a threat in the enterprise for similar reasons, according to Ballmer — because it won’t license its software to others. ‘Apple’s a good company, I won’t take anything away from them, but they have a certain kind of strategy. They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don’t believe in letting other people make it.’
MacDailyNews Take: And therefore, it actually works for the users instead of against. Which is why Microsoft and Ballmer dumped PlayForSure to try to, once again, copy Apple by “putting the hardware and software together,” with the Zune. Related: Microsoft tries to match Apple’s vertical approach – October 11, 2006. And Apple is already significantly boosting its share of the personal computer market, dummy.
Niccolai continues, reporting that Ballmer also said, “I’m not saying there isn’t a threat’ from Apple, he said. But if Microsoft and its PC partners ‘do our jobs right, there’s really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise.”
Full article here.
Such a fundamental lack of understanding of major markets in which his company competes should be appalling to not only shareholders, but… uh, we mean: May Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes!
Oops,
paragraph 3 line 1 should be “can’t”.
gotta proof better.
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Apple already has a footprint, Mr.bozo ballmer, check your ass!
and since Apple tends to aim high, the next one will be a roundhouse to your head. No chairs here bozo, you lose!
Can anyone here tell me what exactly could have (or should have) Ballmer said? Keep in mind, Ballmer is a CEO of a most powerful tech company in the world, that thoroughly dominates the desktop OS world, which is just huge today. There is no way someone in such a position could afford himself of elevating a competitor by saying that they are worthy, doing something right and that his company should re-evaluate strategy. Ballmer said the only thing he COULD say in his position. And as John Gee says, he allowed that one “IF”, by putting the onus partly (if not squarely) on the hardware makers. Even that one might stand to be incorrect, if Android proves to be successful against Winmobile, Symbian, Palm or RIM. After all, G1 (the first Android) is made by HTC, which has already been selling WinMobile devices for quite some time.
Obviously, if this were to happen, Ballmer will have something else to say in defense of his MS strategy.
It is clear that good tech companies cannot stay good when sales people take over, as Jobs had said many times. May Ballmer run Microsoft until he dies of very, very old age…
the business-model of windows mobile has become obsolet. which handsetmaker will pay 15$ for a license if they can get better OS like android and soon symbian 60 with more possibilities for differentation (proprietary services on top) for free? me guess: no one. the delay of windows mobile 7 until the secons half of 2009 won’t help. by then it will be doa.
“But if Microsoft and its PC partners ‘do our jobs right,…”
Yeah, but that’s the problem, Ball me-Boy, you’re not doing your job right. You’re falling behind, software side, and hardware side you don’t even get a foot on deck.
‘And he who is first will later be last,
for the times, they are a-changin’!’
What a crapper.
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Laughing my ass off.
microsoft’s partners…. let’s see…
Dell selling off plants, downsizing dramatically, HP developing it’s own OS, who are MS’s partners?
mdn magic word.. meet, as wait till enterprise meets Mac OS X!
“…there’s really no reason Apple should gain any footprint in the enterprise.”
Reading between the lines, is Ballmer making a Freudian slip? Has he already psychologically ceded the consumer market, and staked out the enterprise as their last line of defense?
Strange, I keep getting images of Custer and the 7th Calvary….
“Ballmer should keep his gaping pie hole shut and stay in his cave.
I’m convinced that Ballmer’s mouth is really his rectum, because only diarrhea seems to pour out of it.”
Don’t you mean “squirt?”
I could not resist…
Just 4 old time sake.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4860483760049380308
WoOOOOOOOOOOO MSFT!!!!!
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!!!
JUST LOL as to the state of MSFT….. What a JOKE!!
iJah420 says maybe they should retool and come up with something original… like say OH I GOT IT!!!.. the iZune YEAH iZune……. Good GRIEF!
As Mark Twain said so well …
” It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. “
Is there any doubt now ?
As a general rule, it is best not to get into a conversation with a delusional person. So whatever noise Ballmer made, I don’t care.
In one paragraph, TGAFM compared Apple’s OS sales to Windows, sidestepped the iPhone, music player and music sales markets and then dropped in search engines as a comparison.
That’s sloppy and illogical trolling. Now you why paint thinner cans have warning labels about the dangers of sniffing the product.
Suck on that.
Yes indeed, marketshare doubled from 4 to 8% in de US and mostly due to Windows-switchers
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Apple makes half the profits of MS now with 25% of the workforce.
Times are indeed changing…!
heh, MonkeyBoy has become the Reverend Al Sharpton ot tech. Both are hilarious.
That bozo couldn’t predict the future if he had a fricking crystal ball!!! What a clown!!!
PeterJ
He’s so clueless. I really get a kick out of stuff he says. How did this guy become so important? It’s mind-boggling.
Daniel Eran already called it: Ballmer lucked out in college roommates. That’s pretty much it.
Genuine losers always trash-talk their competitors.
Enough said.
Notice how he keeps referring to the “enterprise” and not at all to the home. That’s because he knows he’s getting his clock cleaned in that market. The only they have left is the enterprise.
Ballmer is relying on a strategy that worked just great during the infancy of the micro computer industry. That strategy is proving to be a failed one now that computers are infinitely more complex, as are the security issues they face.
Microsoft will be a major force in the market for many years to come, but I’d be willing to bet that Linux will own the business world in the near future – and with that upheaval, Apple will fit in many more niches than it does today (particularly the home market).
MS will never get it. Marketshare isn’t everything.
Read it and weep, MAC lemmings. Ballmer is right.
I can build my own smartphone and customize it any way I want and it will run way more programs than the overpriced, proprietary iPhone. Dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Ballmer is like the captain of a sinking boat… Even as folks were scrambling to get off the ship he could not see a problem with how things are on his boat, or why the other boats are sailing steady.
They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don’t believe in letting other people make it.
OMG. Nothing like being unable to see the forest for the trees.
I know uneducated forklift drivers who “get” Apple’s business model.
Yet Ballmer still holds the top job at MS.
Does anyone remember the name of that Iraqi reporter for the first gulf war? Baghdad Bobby or something like that, You know the Iraqi military was getting pushed back, crushed if you will, and he is out there on the airways spouting off about how the Iraqi military was pushing back the Americans.
Well I think that guy was secretly Ballmer practicing for his role at Microsoft.
Maybe?