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!
So he starts off by saying that Apple’s strategy doesn’t work, then concedes they are a pretty good company, and have been successful in a few key markets in the US, and then ends by saying they won’t gain share in a market they’re not even competing in.
*ding ding ding!
Shareholders revolt!..
Seriously, Apple’s strategy is perfect for the consumer market. Ballmer knows it. And the only thing he can say is “we don’t expect them to take over that market and start chipping away at the Enterprise market”
Pathetic
Are Ballmer and George W. Bush related?
Yes Let’s pray for Ballmer to sink Microsoft every day a little bit more with his great understanding
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In this instance Ballmer is right. As long as Apple keeps Mac OS X and the iPhone proprietary it will be competing with everyone else, not partnering with them to eliminate Microsoft. And do you think the entire worldwide PC industry is just going to pack up and go home because Apple hits 3% worldwide share?
Steve Jobs is actually Microsoft’s greatest ally because his strategies will always keep Apple as a small percentage of the PC market. As long as Steve is alive and Mac OS X is not licensed, Microsoft’s going to do just fine.
Ballmer is a sure guide to the future of information technology, and I say that without sarcasm. He really is. Whatever he predicts, the opposite generally happens. He was right off-target when he predicted that the iPhone wouldn’t sell. And he hit the nail on the thumb about Vista. Since he said that Apple isn’t a threat to Microsoft in the enterprise, it means that in a few years we’ll all be using Macs or Linux in the office.
To Anway:
Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf
You know, if he hadn’t been a college buddy of Gates (I believe that is the case) I could see him behind the counter at the local Ace Hardware store, doing a mediocre job. He’d be the guy you WOULDN’T ask for advice.
The only good thing in this article is the Uncle Fester picture.
If vertical integration does not work, why doesn’t this idiot just close down the XBox and Zune money losers?
He seems to have different ideas when it comes to Microsoft vertical integration projects.
Ugh, if I have to hear “unprepared sugared water salesbozo” one more time….. MDN, please think different. You grasp at this like all the Al Gore 2000 election losers. Let go, move on!
It makes no sense for Apple to license its software. Apple is a hardware company that happens to make software, not a software company that happens to make hardware. Licensing the software gives away the hardware business, which is more profitable. It makes more sense for Apple to license the hardware, which is what they have done, in effect, with Bootcamp.
Apple only uses standard protocols, so any hardware company can compete with a vertical solution just by adding their own version of Linux. Dell is already doing that. HP is going to do it also.
@He’s Right
I love how the best thing you can say is that MS will rule PC industry. It’s 2008 buddy. Apple owns the Digital Music/Media market. Apple has rocket the mobile phone market with its smartphone, wisely built ontop of the iPod.
MS is being commoditized, and all they really have left is the money they make from OEM Windows sales and Office/Exchange licensing. But those things haven’t changed in about 10-15 years.
It’s a moving target and you’re still looking at this as if it was 1992.
Did you RTFA?
At the bottom of the article is the most shocking news.
Ballmer is losing weight!
Let the Steve Ballmer death watch begin!
He’s right
Apple will only get a foothold in the enterprise if they screw up…
They have screwed up, so Apple has got a foothold!
Now Microsoft has two options – make it so that their license agreements prohibit the use of anything other than windows mobile and Windows to connect to exchange…. or rewrite Exchange with a proprietry interface that only they have the APi for.
They have tried both of these before and used both to annihilate competition before the courts had finally had enough and fined them billions of dollars. By then of course the monopoly was in place so they didn’t give a sh*t!
So come on uncle fester….. your partners and you are incapable of getting it right so which one of the above is it to be this time (only, you’re too late implementing either)!
Does Ballmer realize that Nokia uses Symbian, and that is going open-source?
The very same reason Fester gives for Microsoft coming out ahead of Apple is the EXACTLY the same reason Microsoft will fail.
Frankly, Microsoft is a failing giant who can’t rip off other companies as well as they used to. They’re well into their demise, and I think, internally, they know this. That’s why they put a bimbo like Fester at the top: to continue the bluff as long as they can.By doing so, it keeps the stock at a higher level than it would be.
BLUH HUH HUH HUH HUHHHH!!!! $500! Fully subsidized! With a plan. That’s 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!
He sounds like the “Hank Steinbrenner” of all computer companies!!!!!!! XD
As much as I would love Apple to gain significant market share, it just won’t happen. 10% tops. Why? Because that MS Monopoly Engine is still running full throttle with the US Government happily riding along, and IT/CIO Windows only vision controlling what users want to use.
iCal this Shite from uncle Fester
“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.””
if they do their jobs right?!?
well, i guess Apple will see a big foot print in the enterprise over the next year….
“… there’s really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise.”
I wonder if it’s ever occurred to Ballmer that Apple may not want a footprint in enterprise. Probably not. Like everyone else who sees “enterprise” as a Holy Grail, he just doesn’t get that “enterprise” isn’t necessary for Apple’s long term success.
Apple has done very well getting customers to come to them, why turn that around?
“MS is being commoditized,”
MS’s strategy was always to be the commodity OS. They’ve achieved that.
“Does Ballmer realize that Nokia uses Symbian, and that is going open-source?”
Symbian isn’t really competitive with smartphone platforms. It’s fine for those millions of mid range feature phones they ship each week. Unless Nokia tart it up quite a bit it’ll go the same way as Palm OS.
Apple has a great smartphone platform and have got a lot of buzz out of the gate. but the majority of people are still using it as an iPodPhone with web browsing.
The real question which is posed is whether Apple can get any traction with serious application developers or whether it is scaring them all off.
Even then, the closed mode, by it’s nature limits the maximum share Apple will reach in a market.
Anyone can build a Windows Mobile or Android phone, so in Phones, it’s iPhone against everyone else.
What you don’t get is that these companies are not going to go away, they are going to compete head to head with the iPhone.
They are choosing Windows Mobile (overall a better development platform than iPhone anyway, richer more widely understood APIs, better development tools which can be deployed on any PC, no new iPhone specific language and APIs to learn) and working to eliminate the visual differences between it an the iPhone.
Apple’s done a great job in kicking along the phone market. But the real question is whether they’ll be the ones who reap the rewards.
People seem to like the XBox 360’s OS and don’t have too much negative to say about the Zune’s OS. Yet people HATE the Windows OS.
Why do you think that is, Mr. Ballmer? Did you ever think that maybe it’s the hardware/software integration that makes the XBox and Zune a more pleasant user experience than Frankenstein Windows?
@ZuneTang
You wrote “iPhone”, should it not be
“Iphone” or “i-Phone”, “I-phone”?…