“For the 10th time, Bill Gates will inaugurate the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by touting new Microsoft Corp. products and describing his view of the future of computing,” Brian Bergstein reports for The Associated Press. “Before you rush to the edge of your seat Sunday, consider this: Gates is a mediocre prognosticator.”
“In fairness, as the old joke goes, predictions are very hard, especially ones about the future. Scouting a technology on the horizon is one thing; it’s another to foresee the business-execution problems and competitive troubles that might waylay it,” Bergstein reports. “But hey, this is Bill Gates. That savvy guy who has spent more than 30 years atop what remains (for now, at least) the dominant entity in personal computing, a company that pours $7 billion a year into research and development.”
MacDailyNews Take: “For now, at least.” Good one, Brian. They should play him onto stage with “Hail to the Thief.” Maybe Gates will regale CES attendees with how you spend $7 billion per year on R&D and still get totally spanked by Apple for the last 30+ years?
Bergstein continues, “Since this is Gates’ last keynote before he leaves his day-to-day Microsoft duties to focus on philanthropy, it’s as good a time as any to scour his track record.”
MacDailyNews Take: Praise Jobs, this is the last time we have to hear ol’ Kermit squeak out another sleep-inducing yawnfest.
Bergstein continues, “Even when Gates has been right, he’s been wrong. Take that 2001 speech in which Gates prophesied PCs in 75 percent of American homes. He also said that within five years, the most popular form of the computer would be the Tablet, a sleek device that responds to handwritten commands from a pen-like stylus. Gates didn’t come close. IDC counted 3.3 million Tablet sales worldwide in 2007, just 1.2 percent of all PCs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Don’t worry, Apple will more than make up for Microsoft’s ineptitude on the tablet front.
Many more wrong predictions by Gates in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz for the heads up.]
@ How’s This
First of all, get with the program, its 7% for Apple in case you haven’t been out of your mom’s basement in a while…
And also, cockroaches vastly outnumber humans on this planet, but no one would ever mistake them for the more intelligent species.
@deepdish
Yes, it’s true. The thing about the video game industry that you have to know is this: you don’t make money on hardware, you make it on software. Microsoft loses money on every Xbox they sell. Couple that with the $1 billion cost of extending the warranty to three years to cover the crappy hardware, they aren’t going to turn a profit for a long time, if ever.
And to address your other question: I believe the 360 has sold more than the Wii, and definitely more than the PS3, but the Wii will pass it soon. Also, you must keep in mind that the 360 has been out for one year longer than either the Wii or the PS3. One major problem with the 360 is that most of their marquee games are first-person shooters, and the Japanese do not typically buy violent games. The 360, and the Xbox before it, do not sell well in Japan, which is a huge market to miss out on. The Wii has the advantage of being accepted worldwide, and it will soon pass the 360 on total sales.
@deepdish
Steve Jobs has been asked to be the keynote speaker at CES. His reply was that he would be happy to speak at their show, but that the CES would need to be rescheduled so that it didn’t conflict with his MacWorld presentation. CES responded by moving the show ahead of MacWorld.
@deepdish:
MS makes money in the Xbox division in the quarters in which it releases a version of Halo. That’s about it; I think they began to make a profit on the Xbox console but then they replaced it with the Xbox 360 console on which they lose money per sale, especially given the problems they’ve had with it.
@Art
“SO MANY LEMMINGS…”
We Americans to some degree ARE lemmings. It is only the now 7.5% of us in this country that are enlightened enough to shake the lemming habit.
I just hope Gates has to do something that involves a remote control.
@LorD1776…. funny. Or could we please have him demo speach recognition software on the pc? Now that would be funny.
If Apple has ‘X’ value of marketshare that does not make MS’s marketshare ‘100% – X.’ There are other players out there, however small they may be.
Also, while MS’s marketshare is is declining, Apple’s is soaring to new heights.
Ampar, Mexican citizen Carlos Slim Helú DID surpass Gates in wealth.
That’s why “How’s This”, as astoundingly ignorant as s/he may be, says Gates is the richest AMERICAN on earth – the only part of How’s This'” post that contains sense.
Speaking of bad hardware, it’s interesting to note that if you Google for “Microsoft Sync” (use quotes), the new car interface included in many Ford and GM models, half of the hits returned are fawning, gushing articles by Rob Enderle.
Ol’ Rob’s earning his paycheck, big-time.
I will never again buy a car from a manufacturer who thinks it’s a good idea to have Microsoft in the cockpit.
> if you Google for “Microsoft Sync”
use quotes and then click the NEWS tab
@ deepdish and other, no, the 360 has not outsold the wii, but yes it has the PS3. Also, someone made the comment that video game companies lose money on hardware, and traditionally, that has been absolutely true, and is still with the 360 and ps3, but not with the wii. So not only is nintendo kicking trash in the number of units sold, it’s also just humiliating sony and microsoft in profits. now as far as the article goes, gates doesn’t make there predictions because he necessarily believes they’ll happen, but rather because when you make wild predictions, you stimulate interest in certain fields, and help that field to grow. Did that work with tablets? No. Can it work on other things? Sure. Do i agree with gates doing it? Not as the CEO of a publicly traded company i don’t. If he were merely a tech enthusiast, or, as much as i hate most of them, analyst, then that would be fine, and possibly beneficial to the computer market as a whole
My favorite Bill Gates quote of all time… so prescient, huh?
“Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640k of ram!?” — Bill Gates, 1981
Jim – TIV,
Yeah, that would be good too. But I guess no matter what the poor schmuck does, it will give us a chuckle. Or maybe just invoke our pity.
That Ford/MS ‘Sync’ system sounds kinda cool. All ya gotta do is tell your car what song you want to hear, and it plays. Cool.
It wouldn’t work for me though. I don’t know any songs or groups from the last 15 years, and I’ve totally forgotten anything that came before that.
aren’t Microsh*t alarmed that somebody who is supposed to be their chief architect (the visionary and future guide), gets virtually every prognostication wrong? Guess that shows you how much he actually understands…
Gates long ago mastered the key management notion of being the dumbest guy in the room and having the best and brightest (apparently) work for you. Except of course for the 8 000 000 monkeys typing code at random over 5 years to produce vista
of course the monkeys involved were Ballmer’s relatives…it’s microsh*t’s idea of a genetic algorithm to design better software
What comes out of Bill’s mouth is not prognostication, it’s simply marketing.
The MDN magic word: finally – as in, finally his last one!
“predictions are very hard, especially ones about the future…”
What other type of predictions are there? You don’t predict the present or past.
Sounds a little familiar- from Wikipedia:
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” – Niels Bohr
hmm.
It’s easy to see where that 7 billion is spent on. It’s spent on insuring that Windows will continue to maintain as much of that 95% monopoly on the planet. Eventually all other companies with their other products will conform to stay compatible with Windows. Get locked in and keep that revenue coming to MS. That’s where you’ll see that 7B is being spent on.
Meanwhile those of us with a choice can enjoy the amazing products Apple develops with the money the spend on R&D;.
@How’s this
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
@ANDD… a bit more.
that pic is the personification of MS in all it’s sordid splendor.
iPhone users (the CEO of the company where I am employed for example) are insisting that it is thoroughly supported as an Exchange email client.
Sure, at first some of my fellow IT guys said, “no, sorry, we can’t do that.” The CEO basically said, “Bullshit. Make it work, or you’ll be looking for work.” Guess what? Um, they’re making it work.
Flashback to about 7 years ago, when the Chair of one of our research departments was told a Mac would jeopardize the stability of our network, and was therefore classified as a “forbidden” platform. She laughed at them out loud and connected anyway.
She shared this story with the CEO recently, who said, “tell me who I need to fire.”
The times are a changin’ people.
“So, remind us how you get from that reality the conclusion that Bill and his company is dumb, stupid, inept and makes inferior products?”
People usually stick with what they’ve got, until they see the light. In the 90’s Apple had poor leadership and didn’t progress, so people didn’t see Apple as a company that made good products. Since Circa. 1997 Apple’s leadership has been awesome and their products exceedingly stylish, intuitive, well engineered and just better.
In the 90s, then Apple lost much market share. Microsoft gained much market share. Microsoft products are inferior. People just stick with what they’ve got. Plus your market share figures are very wrong. Recently in the US Apple had 8.1%. And also there are plenty of other operating systems. Apple’s market share refers to both Operating system and Hardware. You must look at other companies hardware market share, and the fact that Windows can be installed on Macs.
fm•
I’m just wondering how many CES attendees will show up at Gates’ keynote with iPhones…
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