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!
Remember Michael Dell’s predictions about Apple and look at where Dell and Apple are today.
They left out the part where everyone snickered at him when he said that.
How in the Hell does Steve Jobs still get so much crap for having a reality distortion field surrounding him, with all the crap the comes from the mouth of Ballmer? I don’t think the world or even the internet is ready for the mind of Steve Ballmer!
More Kool-Aid for me, please.
Ballmer is losing weight!
Let the Steve Ballmer death watch begin!
Heh is Ballmer trying to copy Jobs here too?!?!
Anyway there’s no news here.
Ballmer will succumb to age long before he’d croak from weight loss.
@eWorldian
Are Ballmer and George W. Bush related?
Nah. Ballmer is more like Hitler was in 1945.
I.e hiding in his little bunker with fantasies of grandeur, with NO idea of what’s really happening on the streets above.
How much of MS can see what’s coming and are simply ignoring is orders, the way the German military did in the end?
Would that explain, in part, why MS’s vast talent pool is so ineffective at getting anything done?
Fester is Microsoft’s Biden.
I love when those two talk.
It’s like, give your competition the edge!
LMAO…
The reason MSFT took over the desktop had nothing to do with open ended contracts and PC’s. It had everything to do with Monopolistic anticompetitive actions requiring every PC builder to put Windows, whether they wanted to or not.
As for the Windows Mobile business, they have not ruled that platform, Symbian does. I am so sick and tired of hearing Balmer and is cohorts talking about doing things better and having more market share, when if all things were equal, this would not be the case.
Picture a supplier being cut off completely if they did not use Microsoft products. That is what happened to PC makers. Talk to my good buddies, they will tell you that is why Microsoft won the desktop.
Put some real competition in the mix and believe me, they stand no chance.
“Steve Ballmer said Nokia, Research in Motion and Apple will all lose out as the market expands over the next five years”
Well, at least he’ll be able to claim a score of 2 out of 3.
“It had everything to do with Monopolistic anticompetitive actions requiring every PC builder to put Windows, whether they wanted to or not.”
Just how did they do that? I mean force all those companies who according to you didn’t want to load an MS operating system to buy and sell Windows with their PCs?
“Picture a supplier being cut off completely if they did not use Microsoft products”
And this would matter how if you didn’t want to sell Microsoft products?
> But if Microsoft and its PC partners ‘do our jobs right…
That’s laughable. It’s Microsoft who is failing its PC partners at the moment. Over the years, using the “Balmer strategy,” all major PC makers (other than Apple) have become weak and dependent on Microsoft. And now, not only are Macs better integrated between hardware and software, Mac OS X is far superior to Windows Vista. That’s a major advantage that Apple has over everyone else, and it’s Microsoft fault.
And what Balmer appears to ignore is that once the Mac OS X market share reaches a certain point (maybe about 25%), Apple will certainly reconsider a strategy that includes licensing of Mac OS X to some extent.
But does it really matter…? Apple only designs Macs; it does not make them. As market share increases, Apple just needs to contract with another Asia manufacturer to produce more Apple designed Macs. There may be a point where licensing Mac OS X becomes more profitable than selling hardware and software together, but there is no technical reason why Apple could not continue their current strategy well beyond 30%.
No No No
You all have Ballmer all wrong
He’s no idiot
I have it from very good sources that from day one he knew how much Microsoft sucks
So, all these years he’s been putting all his money into the Sub Prime Real Estate Market
Oh, ah, well, ummm …
BC
Well he’s an idiot. He can’t pick up Micro$oft’s flaws!
You’re an ignorant prat!
Why don’t you go down to your local independent boxmaker and ask him what happened in the late 90’s? Why don’t you ask him what would happen if he didn’t install Office on the desktop or Windows 95 or 98 on a machine that he was selling? Ask him if he had to pay a “Dos Fee” for the “invention of the PC” to Microsoft if he wasn’t putting Windows on the desktop.
When you’re done, come back and tell me I’m lying. I lived through this you court jester and it’s why I don’t use Windows.
Balmer is a sort of hero, in a way!
He is drawning M$ but he helps chairs industries to stay up!
Oh! $ won’t make you smart!
Apparently reality is not in Ballmer’s vocabulary. He’s like the monkey, see nothing and hear nothing, now he needs to get the third part right of KEEPING HIS BIG FAT MOUTH SHUT!!!!
Oh he knows nothing to, look at how Vista and the Zune turned out. CRAP!!!!!
Oh by the way Ballmer, Apple’s market share is going up, way up.
Reality check again.
Nope, he’s not there.
Hey we have another clueless PC lover who doesn’t get it. The Windows era is broken, over, done, finished, caput, ended. It’s full of viruses and spyware. It’s a resource HOG, a PIG, a slow piece of crap that won’t move anymore. It’s at the end of its rope. Unreliable, slow, always wanting to do things its way instead of what the user/customer wants. People don’t want to do computing like that anymore. They don’t want to wait five minutes for a program to load only to find out they’ve BEEN HACKED!!! They don’t need an OS that has to ask for permission to even open up a window and be annoying as hell doing it besides. They don’t want to spend $400.00 on an upgrade that will end up costing them $2,000.00 because now none of there hardware is compatible either. Oh and the software too. Asta la VISTA to Windows and all the headaches it brings.
OSX works, is safe, and can do anything Windows can do only actually do it.
Disagree with your history interp about the mac.
MS didn’t “take” the PC market. By the time the mac was realeased MS already HAD it. (And they still needed to break anti-trust laws to keep it.)
But the conclusion is absolutely the same. The position of WinMobile today is hardly the position of DOS in 1984.
Plus Steve Jobs has learned a few things over the years and has much smarter people working for him.
May Uncle Festus have a long reign over M$!
Ballmer Bozo sez: “Apple’s a good company, I won’t take anything away from them,”
HAHAHAHAHA!
“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.”
Indeed. That’s why I don’t allow PCs in my home. I only suffer them in other unfortunately locations on Earth. The marriage of the hardware with the OS is why the Macintosh is BRILLIANT and why the Mac “JUST WORKS”.
The blind date of the IBM derived PC is why, to this very day, there is still the horror of ‘Plug and Pray’. Don’t believe me? Go on! Upgrade your PC to 64 bit Vista and have fun getting drivers to work. Then ask yourself: How long is it going to take the PC market to move entirely 64 bit?
Apple started providing 64 bit Macs with 64 bit Mac OS X in 2003. Apple went 100% 64 bit hardware and OS in 2006.
In the same period of time, the Mac market share has done nothing but climb in the consumer, business and enterprise markets.
The iPhone? Market share penetration that has made history since the day of release.
Yeah right. They’re gonna lose. Repent, the end is near.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/
Steve, you ignorant slut.
Memo to CEO Monkey Boy:
Before you go making these ridiculous predictions regarding Apple, how has your company done FINANCIALLY compared to Apple over the last ten years. The price of your stock has appreciated a little over 6% while Apple’s has grown over 1800%!
Try using your mastery of BS in explaining that to your stockholders. I sure wouldn’t want to be an employee at M$ and have part of my compensation tied to M$ stock options.
“don’t you ask him what would happen if he didn’t install Office on the desktop or Windows 95 or 98 on a machine that he was selling? “
Nothing happened except he wasn’t selling machines customers wanted. But lets be serious. Who actually BROUGHT the OS with their white box PC in the 90’s?
“The price of your stock has appreciated a little over 6% while Apple’s has grown over 1800%!”
It depends where you pick your timeframe:
Over 20 years only a moron would want to own Apple instead of Microsoft. Microsoft has outperformed Apple by 700%
Over 14 years, the return is about the same.
Over the last year, the return for Microsoft and Apple is about the same.
Over the last 6 months or less, it’s been Microsoft substantially outperforming Apple.
@20 20 hindsight
Again, I stated: ” how has your company done FINANCIALLY compared to Apple over the last TEN years.”
According to the Stock Performance figures and graphs on Morningstar’s website:
Apple (AAPL) Sep 1998 $9.53/share
Aug 2008 $169.53/share
Microsoft (MSFT) Sep 1998 $27.52/share
Aug 2008 $27.29/share
The graph for M$ for the last ten years looked like it had “flatlined.” (No stock splits or any other adjustments were noted)