Microsoft CEO Claims iPhone Will Be Bust

Theaetetus writes "In an interview with USA Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed there is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. The article also deals with Microsoft's friction with the Justice Department, friction with Google, and the profitability of MSN. 'No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo. Credit that to Steve (Jobs) and Apple. They did a nice job. But it's not like we're at the end of the line of innovation that's going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I'll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune.'"

Comments

Spoken Like a True Self-Deluded CEO

[eldavojohn]

I want to address the market share statement by citing Apple's PC Market share:

According to research firm Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totaled 57 million units in the first quarter of 2006, representing a 13.1 percent increase over the same period last year. But in that time, Apple's share of the worldwide market slipped from 2.2 percent to a mere 2.0 percent, the firm's data shows.

Now, that's a pretty low figure. Yet, curiously enough, I know plenty of people who own a mac. But they only own one Mac that does everything and they aren't allowed to use them at work. So, I would posit that it's simply because enterprise businesses aren't used to Macs so they don't use them. That's a large part of the market share. Yet Apple is still very much in the ball game of the personal computer because of the loyalists and their avid love for Macs.

Not to mention that special "something" that Apple has and Microsoft clearly does not have. I don't claim to know what it is--I don't own a Mac--I'm bicurious about OSX and I don't know why ... is it the bash kernel? I'm also curious about the iPhone. Outrageously expensive but it has that special something to it that will intrigue the masses and we will be informed about it despite the fact that maybe only 2% of us actually purchased the device.

'No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo. Credit that to Steve (Jobs) and Apple. They did a nice job. But it's not like we're at the end of the line of innovation that's going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I'll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune.'

Translation:

It's obviously expensive, that's bad. They will make more money than us ... someway I don't understand. We have a mobile operating system and are fairly successful in pushing it into mobile devices. I'll leave out how much just our software raises the price of a mobile device ... because it's probably pretty significant $50-$100. We dropped the ball on music and we're currently dropping the ball on a billion phone sales by making them more expensive without providing the customer with the strange benefits I don't understand but Steve Jobs thinks is obvious. I'm sure Microsoft will come out ahead here. Oh, and I can't wait until my uncle squirts Tom Dooley by The Kingston Trio all over me. We're smart, we chose to target the old people who buy and return a single piece of fruit and are electronically hip and are retiring as opposed to the foolish spending youths of today--why do you think we colored it brown?!

The question left out of this interview was whether Ballmer has to lie to himself that he's working for the greatest company on earth every morning when he wakes up or if that lie persists full strength throughout the week.

If you underestimate your enemies--no matter how big or small--you're going to get burned.

Re:Spoken Like a True Self-Deluded CEO

[MrBugSentry]

Ballmer just defines ball game differently than you do. Lots of love, low sales is success for some. He would (obviously) prefer little love, high sales.

I suspect that what Mac has is the notion that by buying the 2% solution, you are smarter than us dolts in the 98%. If you can convince your customers that they are a member of an elite, you can sell them anything.

Well, maybe not an iproduct, but close.

I speak as a former member of the cult who got seduced by the fact that the Windows market is thirty times the size of the Mac market.

Re:Spoken Like a True Self-Deluded CEO

[flydpnkrtn]

Actually, if you really want to get technical, no it is not.
Darwin is the BSD-based OS, XNU is the kernel, not the BSD kernel. :)

marketing genius

[sir 8ed]

yeah, go for the 85 year old demographic, lots of money in music downloads to be had there.

Subsidized by what?

[AKAImBatman]

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item.

Excuse me, Mr. Balmer? Subsidized by who or what?

Maybe Balmer knows something I don't (always possible), but methinks that he needs to go back to CEO school* for lessons on how to pay attention to your competition. In specific, the reason why the iPhone is going to cost $500 is because it's not being subsidized by cell phone contracts. Jobs is trying to change the rules in that respect. Like Nintendo, Apple wants to make a profit off of every hardware unit sold. Any money that comes in through the surplus channels of additional content or features will simply be creme.

My 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune.

I can see how that went: "Here uncle, take this Zune player. It's FREE! That way I can tell everyone that my 85 year old uncle has a Zune, but doesn't want an iPod."

Uncle: "Have you lost your marbles, sonny-boy!?! What in tarnashun' does your old uncle here need with this Dune player?"

Balmer: "Zune..."

Uncle: "Don't interrupt me when I'm talking boy! You think you're so sh'mart with yer fancy electronics company!"

Balmer: "Technically soft-"

Uncle: "I said DON'T INTERRUPT ME!"

Blamer: "Um. Sorry."

Uncle: "That's better. Now get rid of this piece of junk. Did I ever tell you about the time I was flying over Iwo Jima and ended up in a blazing dogfight? I think it was 1942..."

Balmer: *sigh*

Two months later...

Blamer: "My 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune."

Reporter: "Oooooo..."

* I hear that he didn't finish his Dark Lord training with Jeff Skilling... :P

Methinks the Ballmer doth protest too much

[Space cowboy]

This is a product that hasn't launched yet, hasn't been seen in the wild, and only demo'd under controlled circumstances. Yet we've had his illustrious personage repeatedly tell us that this phone is going to be a bust.

If it's such a dead-certain bust, why is he constantly mentioning it in the media ? Surely shome mishtake ? The fact is that he's terrified Apple are going to repeat their success with the iPod, and it shows.

Simon.

Re:Methinks the Ballmer doth protest too much

[cowscows]

The thing is, you're both right, and so was Ballmer. In fact, the only thing wrong here is the headline of the /. article. Ballmer is right that Apple won't see the utter dominance in phones that they've gotten with the iPod. But he and you are also correct in that Apple will sell these things as fast as they can make them for a good while, and they'll make bucketloads of cash off of it.

I guess it's the fault of Microsoft (and maybe IBM before that), that so many people have a hard time calling a company/product successful unless they utterly dominate all of their competitors and basically own the market. In reality, most industries have many competitors, many of which make consistent profit and should certainly be considered successful.

Anyone looking for Apple to own the cellphone market a few years down the line is going to be very disappointed. No matter how big a splash they make, it's an absolutely huge industry, and the iPhone can only grow so fast. Apple will likely be a significant player, and much like in the computer industry, they'll probably hold some influence well beyond what their market share would indicate. And that'll be good for Apple, hopefully good for the mobile phone industry, and good for people who want iPhones.

Re:Target market

[MillionthMonkey]

No, what Ballmer said is that he's hoping he can get his own uncle to buy a Zune before he dies.

Think about that for a second.

Um.. what market share is he talking about.

[thestudio_bob]

I hope he's not saying that windows has 50%, 60% or 70% of the mobile handset market share, because microsoft is not even close.

Symbian - 72.5%
Linux - 16.9%
PalmSource - 2.0%
Microsoft - 4.6%
RIM - 3.8%
Others - 0.2%

So if he's saying Apple will get 5% of the market share, well they will then have a larger share of the market than MS.

Silly Ballmer-speak

Comparing Apples To Lemons

[nick_davison]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed there is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share... 'No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. In other news, Ford's CEO mocked Ferarri: It's a $200,000 item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually look at the 1.3 billion cars that get sold, I'd prefer 60% or 70% or 80% of them to be Fords, than I would to have 2% or 3% which is what Ferarri might get.

In both cases, a company is completely happy building a niche product, that does its job exceptionally well, that they can be truly proud of, and that they can turn a profit on every single one.

Apple themselves said they were only going after 1% of the market. 1% of 1.3 billion is still 13 million. If they can turn $50 profit on each and every one of those, they walk away with an extra $650m on their bottom line next year. Not a bad kick in the teeth for the indignity of having to be exactly the market you went for.

Microsoft has a totally different model. They want global dominance in cell phones because it'll help prop up their model of making the entire world have to use your stuff if they want compatibility and then you can extort money on things like office suites. They'll happily give away their mobile O.S. if it means propping up that model.

Neither one is particularly wrong per se. They're just two totally different models that, evidently, are successful for both companies. Microsoft turns a profit, Apple turns a profit, yay for both of them.

But knocking one model for failing to succeed based on the metrics of your model... while totally succeeding on their own model's metrics and turning a profit... that's a little cheap.

What is interesting is that Apple's own figures were they were aiming for 1% market saturation but Balmer's already referencing 2-3% before it comes out. I'm curious as to whether that's a case of his not getting numbers straight, of Microsoft expecting more success for Apple than Apple's actually banking on, or whether they're just trying to raise the bar now so they can say Apple failed to meet numbers Apple never went for later.

Somebody should send him an iPod

[ILikeRed]

I think Slashdot should start a fund to purchase a iPod for Ballmer's Uncle.

Re:Somebody should send him an iPod

[Steve Ballmer's Uncl]

I'm Steve Ballmer's Uncle. I'll gladly accept your offer.

Re:Target market

[Yoooder]

If I were an Apple marketing Exec, every uncle of Ballmer's would have a free 80gb iPod in their mail today :P

choices

[Gary W. Longsine]

You have a valid point. There's another interesting way to look at this issue, however. People's choices affect other people at times and in ways they don't always anticipate or even care about if informed. The classic example is the protective helmet. If you ride your bicycle or motorcycle without a helmet, you are contributing to a social problem (head injuries) which cost me (the taxpayer) money. Eventually somebody (insurance companies and Medicare) get tired of paying for stupidity and persuade Congress (or State Legislatures) change a law to reduce the cost to the society as a whole from individual stupidity.

If you choose to run Windows that's fine on the level of the individual decision. In theory, I don't care what you run on your PC so long as you and I have access to web sites, can exchange email and photographs, etc. We can be friends and share data freely without even knowing what type of system the other person uses.

However, I care about the fact that email is very nearly useless now. I care about identity theft. I care about industry and government data which is protected in order to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.

How many billions of dollars must be stolen or wasted and how many years must pass before we admit that there are systemic problems with security on Windows which seem to be deeply rooted not solely in hubris as often thought, but also in more subtle philosophy, technology, and methodology choices? These go back decades, and have enabled an enormous industry in identity theft and spamvertising to take root and thrive despite, ahem, entirely new versions of Windows which are, ahem, more secure than ever. Some of these problems can be fixed, and some of them have been substantially mitigated if not outright fixed, for decades, on UNIX. The sad realization that Microsoft apologists refuse to admit is that development methodology and management philosophy affect the security of products produced by the organizations practicing them.

If software vendors were held liable for the expensive calamities that result from their security defects, would the technology industry collapse? Or would it adjust, and then march steadily on, with a greater emphasis placed on security? I suspect it would not collapse, but I don't have the lobbying dollars t back up my position, and neither does anybody else who shares it (thus far). The recent law suits brought against TJX by banks over stolen credit card data may portend a coming shift in alliances. If the banks turn against the software industry next, we will see a shakeup in political alliances and an eventual fight in Congress over this issue. Until then, the issue will remain the abstract musing of the occasional columnist or security analyst.

Discussions of botnets in forums like Slashdot often include the idea that individual home users should be held accountable for the security of their home PC. Well, should they really? They didn't sign up for that. Are they held accountable for the global security implications of their refrigerator? No, they are not because there aren't any except for a few highly abstract issues related to the resources it took to build it and the energy it takes to run it. With a home PC the global security implications are complex, but not highly abstract, rather they are quite direct. Your home PC can be used to steal your identity which could be sold to raise funds for terrorism, for example, which is pretty direct. It can be used to attack other hosts or assist with Distributed Denial of Service attacks on hosts or entire networks, which is unambiguously direct: PC -> Shitstorm.

Quite frankly, the statistics are stark and unforgiving. Windows: roughly 100,000 "known viruses" vs. roughly zero for the Macintosh (margin of error +/- 5 (five)). Twenty percent of home Windows PCs infected vs. roughly zero percent of home Macintosh or Linux systems infected (margin of error +/- 1/100 of 1%). If a relationship bet