“Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is right about one thing: Microsoft waited way too long to get serious about mobile,” Ina Fried writes for Recode. “But he is wrong about another point he has been making of late. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Ballmer suggests that part of Apple’s innovation was convincing carriers to subsidize the phone.”
I wish I’d thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators. You know, people like to point to this quote where I said iPhones will never sell, because the price at $600 or $700 was too high. And there was business model innovation by Apple to get it essentially built into the monthly cellphone bill. – Steve Ballmer
“In reality, plenty of phones were subsidized before and after,” Fried writes. “To be fair, the subsidy for the iPhone was larger than that given to other phones, but BlackBerrys and other smartphones were already being subsidized by carriers when the iPhone debuted.”
Fried writes, “In short, it was the power of the iPhone, not its pricing, that made the phone a hit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Which is why he’s now spending his time writing giant checks to guys in shorts for running up and down courts attempting to throw balls through hoops. Easy-to-understand, simple pursuits are best for Monkey Boy, but even successful basketball team ownership eludes him.
Steve Ballmer, the world’s luckiest blockhead. A more fortunate dorm assignment than Ballmer’s will never happen. – MacDailyNews, August 26, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Bill Simmons: Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has shown ZERO evidence that he knows what he’s doing – August 26, 2015
LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer to dump team’s Apple iPads – September 25, 2014
