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Bill Gates Says Windows Phone Strategy Was Inadequate
puddingebola writes "Perhaps it isn't newsworthy, but Bill Gates has characterized Microsoft's mobile and smartphone strategies as 'a mistake.' From the article: 'In an interview with CBS This Morning's Charlie Rose on Monday, Gates admitted he wasn't pleased with Microsoft's performance in the mobile market, going as far as to characterize the company's smartphone strategy as "a mistake." "We didn't miss cell phones," Gates said. "But the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership, so it's clearly a mistake."'"
Duh.
I mean if the failing marketshare year on year since the iPhone came out didn't clue you in, maybe the KIN debacle would have, or certainly the fact that your marketshare is no better off despite practically owning a phone manufacturing company could point that out.
Considering the lead Microsoft had in the mobile phone market, they were there in 2002 (before Blackberry, I believe), but somehow they never made it work. I'm not sure exactly why. It's actually surprising, not that they failed, but how big their failure actually is.
They knew it was important, they tried to get the market, had a huge lead, and they failed. It's a little more than 'inadequate.'
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Clearly, you must be new here!
I'm honest enough to admit I lie to myself.
A lot of it can be traced to Microsoft's bullying behavior throughout the '90s, when they (along with Intel) owned the digital platforms that mattered. Carriers, handset vendors, application developers, and technically savvy consumers remember that era and don't want to be bullied again. So just canning the EVPs and SVPs in charge of Windows Phone development isn't likely to change things. Getting rid of Ballmer and replacing him with someone who's not a 15-year Softie, now that might be perceived differently.
They've had sixteen or seventeen years to get the various iterations of MSN right, and after billions of dollars have still failed to show much for it. Sure, they've turned Yahoo from competitor into customer, but Google is so far ahead one has to question Microsoft's long term strategic capacity. Even the XBox division, while perhaps having some quarters in the black, is still a big hole that Microsoft shoveled money into to buy market share, and is many years away from ever paying back its investment.
Microsoft has three major profit areas; enterprise volume licensing, OEM consumer licensing and Exchange-Office. It has made a shitload of money off of them, and while it's likely to lose the consumer crown pretty soon as the home PC begins to fade as a must-have computer product, it will still have the enterprise world locked up for some time to come.
Frankly I think they should admit defeat on their mobile and tablet offerings, buy Blackberry, which at least still has some corporate penetration, and tighten the links between those mobile products and Office-Exchange. RT and Surface are still demonstrating just how much Microsoft is on the wrong side of the door trying to get in.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It may be a mistake but weighed against the disaster of Balmer's leadership of Microsoft... You'd be forced to conclude the mobile market was a success.
I happen to agree with that.
Will Bill Gates return then? I like the newer gentler Microsoft even if it is turning incompetent. If Bill was left IE would still have IE 6 crap in their on purpose to make it incompatible with everything else and .docx would be a drmed binary format with no OpenXML so no LibreOffice or GoogleDocs compatibility.
He did the same tricks with SCO Unix before they sold it completely to make sure apps could not be ported. Balmer is too stupid to be this evil
http://saveie6.com/
You heavily promote a WP 7.5 product - the Lumia 900 - and not two months later you declare it to be incapable of running WP8. Good job of throwing WP7.5 users to the wolves. And they wonder why they're losing money...
by a boggy mile, but it still wouldn't have sold. And that's because they've become a dirty brand - generally people use windows, not because they like it, but because they need to run particular software (office, business apps, games) or because they'd rather a mac but can't justify the expense. They have irritated geeks with their anti-competitive behaviour, and seem to be heading into an even more restrictive and walled-garden approach - but starting with the wall before really having a must-have product. These geeks are often the IT-support for friends/family with windows, and they're saying avoid microsoft unless you really have to. On top of all this, even among the general public, microsoft are not a cool brand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ, http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/1732248/msft-reaches-out-to-hackers-do-epic- ). All they've got left going for them is their enterprise image. The 'if you want a proper computer to do work on, you use windows' image. But with Metro, they are just about to throw this down the pan, too. They are doing what nearly cost Blackberry their business - not realising their sales to the consumer were based on their cachet selling to enterprise, and by chasing the consumer, they will lose both groups of customer. And, frankly, after all the dirty tricks they've tried, you can't say they didn't deserve it.
In the context of the article he's talking about Microsoft's *old* phone strategy. Windows Mobile was basically an attempt to do the Blackberry thing with Windows. It could have done worse, but obviously it didn't succeed, which is why they dumped it for Windows Phone. I don't think he's criticizing Windows Phone.
You have to start counting the cards against Ballmer. Windows Mobile was a dominant product up until the iPhone. Symbian was lame and Blackberry was coming on strong. Had they put together a good game plan, working from their strengths, they would have had a better position than they are now. I'm afraid buying a Windows Phone is a losing proposition because 1) Not many phone manufacturers will want to support it, unless MSFT pays most of the freight and 2) Not many developers are running to the platform even though they're opening their arms to get anybody to come over. That means MSFT will have to subsidize on both fronts, which if you're new into the market isn't much of a stretch except they've been in the mobile space for over a decade. And, to be honest, the MSFT ship seems to be missing the dock on quite a few things, which ultimately lead straight to Ballmer's desk. Yes, the company is successful but it's getting passed very quickly by Apple, Google and I'll be interested to see if Blackberry's First Quarter numbers don't do better than Windows Phone 8 in terms of shipped units. If the latter happens I'd stick a fork in it for MSFT and try to recoup what they can from their Desktop/Tablet endeavor or ultimately, just start porting office to Android and wave a white flag.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
He may not run Microsoft, but he's the Chairman of the Board that CHOOSES the guy that runs Microsoft. And year after year, Microsoft's Gates-led Board reaffirms its faith in Ballmer.
How's that worked out for them?
Frankly I think they should admit defeat on their mobile and tablet offerings, buy Blackberry, which at least still has some corporate penetration, and tighten the links between those mobile products and Office-Exchange. RT and Surface are still demonstrating just how much Microsoft is on the wrong side of the door trying to get in.
Microsoft is always a day late and a dollar short. They're just getting Bing together when Search is yesterday. By the time they put out a decent smartphone, in 2017, everyone will say that's so five years ago because the Samsung Shirtbutton will be uploading everything a user sees and does, real time to Facebook and Google Goggles will be all the rage for web content delivery.
At what point is Ballmer going to be held responsible any of the "mistakes" that Microsoft has been making? The guy is bulletproof beyond all logic for a publicly traded company.
He may not run Microsoft, but he's the Chairman of the Board that CHOOSES the guy that runs Microsoft. And year after year, Microsoft's Gates-led Board reaffirms its faith in Ballmer.
That doesn't shock me. Back in the Day, Bill had a Japanese buddy named Kazuhiko Nishi who spent a million dollars building a giant robot dinosaur for a TV show promoting Microsoft products, then had to bail him out when he dropped $275K on a stock scam. Sounds just like a proto-Ballmer.
The KING has no clothes! He's big, brash, loud, a mega-shareholder and he is not managing right.
It's actually good. Not perfect by any stretch, but good. WP9 will probably be caught up on features and have new stuff to boot.
Most of the people ragging on it are either people who reflexively hate MS or people who used WP7 early on and dont' realize that things change.
When people talk about getting new phones I always recomend they give it a try, if you dont' like it that's fine, but don't just dismiss it out of hand, try it out and see if you like it.
I just saw the 2013 printing of his book The Road Ahead with a sticker on the cover which read: Now Revised To Include Wireless.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I would prefer 24x7 to 24x7x365, as the latter misses leap years. It is my understanding, though, that Windows Phones now have achieved five-nines uptime, running properly 9.9999% of the time.
I suspect their R&D department has all kinds of enthusiasm... right before the bean counters have their good shit shelved. It's a miracle the Kinect made it out the doors, and even then, they let a surprise HW hit collect dust.
Remember the Courier? That thing would've been great, and they had a prototype ready before the iPad's dropped. Can you remember people actively petitioning for a microsoft product with "goddamnyou, here, take my money!"? Yeah, they let that die.
Multitouch? They had that in the original surface, the table not that tablet, before the iPhone existed. Died.
That place needs to start loping off heads, starting at the top.
It's a miracle the Kinect made it out the doors, and even then, they let a surprise HW hit collect dust.
The kinect (hardware, the device itself) did not really come from Microsoft's R&D.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect
Kinect builds on software technology developed internally by Rare, a subsidiary of Microsoft Game Studios owned by Microsoft, and on range camera technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which developed a system that can interpret specific gestures, making completely hands-free control of electronic devices possible by using an infrared projector and camera and a special microchip to track the movement of objects and individuals in three dimension.
It is so damn ugly. A phone wont make you go blind looking at white like a much better phone screen would. Odd since computer monitors are considered inferior in DPI as well as flickering.
I plan to get rid of it soon which is a damn shame. Under the hood Windows 8 and Office 2013 are fucking nice. I like the sharing abilities, easy cloud integration, and with 8 all the power and data saving features all with global profiles that go where you go.
But it is sooo white! I have trouble telling if I dose off where the paper ends and where the ribbon begins. I have dark gray on but I feel I am on a 20 year old black and white ancient NeXT cube with monochrome glory from the past.
I like the morphism that all the artists here on slashdot think its hip to hate which imitates physical objects. Aero, shadows, translucent effects, and even leather for the address book in iOS are pleasant and work well. I feel like I am in a time warp looking at the new graphics. It is butt ugly and I hope MS changes it back (I doubt they will) as they just assume we are crankly old middle aged men who hate change. Bah get used to it!
http://saveie6.com/
The purpose of Microsoft Research is to patent every possible thing so nobody else can use it. Not to come up with some new compelling thing. It's about controlling innovation, not creating it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The biggest surprise is that anybody on this planet actually watches Charlie Rose!