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Steve Ballmer Says Smartphones Came Between Him and Bill Gates (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the CEO-vs-former-CEO dept.

Steve Ballmer once said Apple's iPhone would flop because it cost too much -- though he now admits that he failed to anticipate carriers subsidizing the cost of the phone. But that was only the beginning. An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: The former CEO of Microsoft says he and Gates drifted apart over Microsoft's move into the hardware business in the early 2010s, according to Bloomberg. Ballmer says he was the one who pushed for Microsoft to design smartphones and tablets at a time when Apple was already well established. He says Gates and the board seemed reluctant to do so. "There was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business," Ballmer told Bloomberg. "I had pushed Surface. The board had been a little -- little reluctant in supporting it. And then things came to a climax around what to do about the phone business."
Microsoft eventually took a $900 million write down for its first tablet, the Surface RT -- plus most of the value of their $9.5 billion acquisition of Nokia Oyj's handset unit as Microsoft pushed into hardware. "Ballmer's only regret: not doing it sooner," Bloomberg reports, adding that Surface is now profitable and this year will generate more than $4 billion in sales.

61 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Subsidies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    he now admits that he failed to anticipate carriers subsidizing the cost of the phone.

    Huh? How could he have failed to anticipate this? It was already widespread in the industry!

    1. Re:Subsidies by Tx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple's initial pricing scheme for the iPhone actually was different from the norm, but what Ballmer is missing is that it didn't work, and was dropped. So I'm not sure if Ballmer is talking about the initial unsuccessful model or the (as you say already widespread) traditional model that they reverted to. Not clever either way.

      The pricing for 1st generation iPhone was a departure from the traditional wireless pricing model. Apple sold the phone to consumers at a modest discount and recouped their lost profit through kickbacks from AT&T in the form of a cut of the monthly service revenue. This was a great deal for Apple and AT&T but terrible for consumers. Consumers had to pay almost full price ($500-600) for an iPhone AND had to sign a 2-year contract. AT&T offered only 3 rate plans, which fortunately were price competitive with other carriers. These plans included an allocation of voice minutes, 200 text messages and unlimited data. However the original iPhone did not support 3G data or picture/video messaging, like a lot of the other phones on the market. Goldman Sachs predicted AT&T would activate 700,000 iPhones on launch weekend, they only activated 146,000.

      While sales of the original iPhone were growing steadily, they were missing out on mass appeal because of the iPhone’s high initial cost. For the iPhone 3G, AT&T re-negotiated the revenue sharing deal and went back to a traditional handset subsidy model. Consumers would pay $200 less for the iPhone 3G. While $199 for an iPhone looked great, AT&T made some changes to the rate plans. The net result was that to get the same thing as you got with the original iPhone, (voice, unlimited data and 200 texts), you would pay $15 more per month ($10 for 3G data and $5 for 200 texts).

      (from AT&T and the iPhone

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    2. Re:Subsidies by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      apple tried the blackberry deal where the carriers kicked money back to blackberry depending on which data plan you chose. like if you wanted to connect to a corporate BES server for push it would be the most expensive one

    3. Re:Subsidies by sittingnut · · Score: 2

      wonder how many are anticipating the commoditization of so called smart phones, now that market is mature in most countries and hardly grows.
      there isn't going to be money in that market.

    4. Re:Subsidies by stang · · Score: 1

      had to pay almost full price ($500-600) for an iPhone AND had to sign a 2-year contract

      Not true, at least for existing customers. I bought the 8GB version the day after it came out and signed nothing.

      --
      "200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
  2. Microsoft did mobile wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think Microsoft did mobile all wrong. It should have focused on the software and let hardware makers decide the models to use it. Buying Nokia was a huge mistake although at the time Microsoft probably figured a big cell phone company like Nokia was a big advantage to pushing Windows mobile. I haven't used Windows mobile OS since 7.5 but even then it was a OS that could easily run well on cheaper and slower hardware. When you look at the sales figures today, Android is now killing IOS in sales. Even Apple hurts itself by not allowing IOS on more devices to give people options. I am a iPhone user myself, but see the much more flexible Android OS as a big advantage over Apple's closed end ecosystem. For example if a Samsung Galaxy phone would drop a 3.5 mm audio jack, a person could easily find another good Android phone with one. If you want USB C charging, or wireless, you can find options for those too. Microsoft obviously lost out on mobile which will hurt their OS going forward.

    1. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're aware that the portable versions of WinCE/WinMobile have been commercially available in third-party devices since 1996, right? And smart phones as early as 2003? That is exactly the tact that Microsoft first followed; they developed the OS as a series of components and allowed the hardware manufacturers to customize the image to the device. It was also a wide-open platform that allowed anyone with a compiler to write an application in a multitude of languages and frameworks and deploy that application to the device. Flash, J2ME, .NET, C++, whatever. WinMobile ran on a wide variety of devices with different capabilities and form factors.

      Everyone from the old guard was taken by surprise from Apple. If anything Microsoft might have fared the best. Palm and RIM are much worse off.

    2. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by gdshaw · · Score: 1

      Buying Nokia was a huge mistake although at the time Microsoft probably figured a big cell phone company like Nokia was a big advantage to pushing Windows mobile.

      At the time a large majority of Windows Phone sales came from Nokia, but Nokia was incurring large losses as a result of this and it is doubtful as to whether they could have continued for much longer. Market share for Windows Phone was languishing around the 3% mark, which wasn't good, but at least kept Microsoft in the fight. Buying the smartphone division of Nokia was arguably just delaying the inevitable, but if Microsoft had not done that then Windows Phone would have failed sooner, more abruptly, and much more visibly.

    3. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      most of the android phone makers operate at a loss or bare break even. apple takes home most of the money in the cell phone market

    4. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      Apple is not "hurting itself" by not allowing other companies to license IOS. The purpose of any company being in business is to generate profit not to increase market share. All of the other phone manufacturers are either losing money or barely profitable. Do you really think that Apple could maintain its current profit margins by licensing its OS for sale on $50 phones?

    5. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by supremebob · · Score: 4, Informative

      The problem there was that the early Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices were horrid. The UI sucked, the OS was buggy as hell, and the hardware designs were clunky. I gave up using mine after it crashed and lost all of it's data for the fourth time.

    6. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by timholman · · Score: 1

      Apple is not "hurting itself" by not allowing other companies to license IOS. The purpose of any company being in business is to generate profit not to increase market share. All of the other phone manufacturers are either losing money or barely profitable. Do you really think that Apple could maintain its current profit margins by licensing its OS for sale on $50 phones?

      Exactly. Even if Apple was crazy enough to license iOS, how much money could it make competing with free, as in Android? Furthermore, there's nothing compelling enough about iOS to warrant a manufacturer paying Apple licensing fees. Featurewise, Android and iOS are very competitive. So exactly what would be the point?

      Many years ago, I read a quote about Apple that still holds true. To paraphrase: "The history of Apple is replete with pundits who say, 'If Apple doesn't change what it's doing, then it will go out of business.' And then the pundit proceeds to explain what Apple should do, which would cause Apple to go out of business if that advice was followed."

    7. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      But Microsoft did allow hardware makers to make their own handsets running Windows Phone. There has been a few models from each vendor, the problem is that they generally sucked and they all had the same fundamental issue: the OS just came too late to the fight, making it have an insurmountable deficit in its app market compared to Android and iOS. Hell, Android, which trailed iOS in high availability by not very long at all, took years to make up that deficit. Developers get very attached to whatever ecosystem they start off in, and making them switch or branch out seems very difficult.

      Microsoft didn't figure out how to entice them, so they had the same chicken and egg problem: phones don't sell because they don't have many apps, but they don't have many apps because since they don't sell, devs don't want to make apps for them. Even trying something like BlackBerry's "hey, we can run Android apps too!" doesn't quite work out. The OS itself, from what I've heard, is actually quite nice, it's just the ecosystem that's lacking (that, and a lot of early phones released for it were rather underwhelming/underperforming).

    8. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by gtall · · Score: 1

      In addition to that, I think Google looked at what Apple was going to do (Schmidt was on their board) and what MS was providing and decided they could screw MS out of a market and use MS's PC software strategy to screw Apple. However, they didn't do it just to screw the other two, they did it because Google knows its own revenue streams better than anyone. Having a dominant OS on phones when PCs were going nowhere or down due to be being an overmatch for what people actually used computing for, meant that they could preserve their revenue model. Changing a company's revenue model is fraught with pitfalls, many companies have died trying to do it. The jury's still out on whether MS will survive the changes in computing with phones and the cloud. So far they seem to be holding their own outside of phones.

    9. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by c · · Score: 1

      There has been a few models from each vendor, the problem is that they generally sucked...

      Well, they didn't suck, really, but aside from the Lumia they were mostly just second-tier Android phones with Windows and a new label. OEM's weren't stupid enough to put a lot of design and development effort into flagship Winphones, and as Microsoft got more desperate and cozied up to Nokia they cared even less.

      The only standout Winphone's were the Lumia series, and in the end Microsoft was stuck with the choice of going all-in or quitting the market. Say what you will about Ballmer, but quitting isn't his style.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    10. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by unixisc · · Score: 1

      The problem there was that the early Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices were horrid. The UI sucked, the OS was buggy as hell, and the hardware designs were clunky. I gave up using mine after it crashed and lost all of it's data for the fourth time.

      And Microsoft never recovered from that even when they came up w/ an excellent phone OS. IMO, they should have named Windows Phone 'Metro', and run it as its own brand, w/o touching the Windows brand. That way, it wouldn't have been associated w/ Windows CE. Had Nokia run such a phone on its Lumias, it could have caught on on its own, w/o the Microsoft name being so visible. I had a Lumia 520, which was my first smartphone, and using it was a lot smoother than the old Moto RAZR as far as texting went. In fact, Windows Phone 8 had a much smoother keyboard than either Android Kitkat or iOS 5.

    11. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Precisely!!! When Apple terminated its cloning experiment for Macs w/ Power Computing, Umax and Motorola SPS, it was clear that they determined that getting the platform to eclipse Windows was not gonna happen. So it makes less sense for Apple to license iOS, when the fact that phone and OS is all owned by the same company is a big factor in its success

    12. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Except that their software for devices was not very good. By that I mean, completely awful. The only reason anyone ever used WinCE was loyalty from Windows fans and a mistaken idea from some that it'd be easier to hire cheap commodity Windows developers without losing any quality. I remember my boss getting a Windows based PDA and bragging that it could do Word in color, and then a month later was bitching about it and wishing he still had his Palm V.

      For some reason there's a group of people who just refuse to accept that Microsoft is not very good at making software, but because the only software they've ever seen in their lives is from Microsoft they assume that's the state of the art.

    13. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Weak sauce, Fandroid. Get some coffee and try again, but do know anyone can play the "our stuff had your new feature X years ago" game.

    14. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      The history of Apple is replete with pundits who say, 'If Apple doesn't change what it's doing, then it will go out of business.'

      However this only seems to hold true when Jobs was the CEO. During the brief period when he was not they very nearly did go out of business...and sadly it seems to be happening again.

    15. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by strikethree · · Score: 1

      The UI sucked, the OS was buggy as hell, and the hardware designs were clunky. I gave up using mine after it crashed and lost all of it's data for the fourth time.

      I gave up on mine after my wife wanted to argue with me over the phone and the phone kept hanging up on her. Seriously. Less, seriously, *I* should have been the one hanging up on her, not my phone.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    16. Re: Microsoft did mobile wrong by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      Sure Google had knowledge of where Apple was going. But they didn't need any special access to know that Apple alone wouldn't control mobile. And the only other likely contender was Microsoft. The same Microsoft that was already trying to grab Google's business on the desktop. My point is that Android vs Apple was probably better for Apple than Windows vs Apple. There was going to be a cheap OEM smartphone OS one way or the other.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    17. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Are you high? The market at the time was completely and utterly dominated by Blackberry - with the keyboard taking up half the device.

    18. Re:Microsoft did mobile wrong by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      yes i must've dreamed

      Yes, you are dreaming an alternate history of smartphones.

      used a resistive touchscreen (as opposed to the iphones capacitive screen

      Keep fucking that chicken and thinking a product is no more than a billeted list of parts.

      Apple did not play any role in the R&D required to make capacitive touchscreens

      Nor did Apple play a role in the R&D of micro-drives nearly a decade earlier. Doesn't change the fact that the iPod revolutionized the mp3 player industry.

  3. Ballmer still did everything wrong by klingens · · Score: 1

    What Microsoft needed to do, and failed, was to get a big chunk of the new market called "mobile". Microsoft surface division with its much touted billions of marketshare is not mobile. It's 100% pure PC: PC hardware with PC software. Not a single sliver of a new market there at all. So the surface division as it stands right now is totally irrelevant to this.
    Even if you want part of the mobile market, it's debatable if you need to build your own hardware. Google steamrolled this market and now owns it like Microsoft owns the desktop without building and selling any hardware. Yes there are Nexus devices but they certainly weren't made to make money or get marketshare.

    So Ballmer was utterly wrong in his assessment of needing to build and sell hardware, the surface division is like the xbox one: horrible losses for years, billions of dollars spent to make a few millions in "profits". With profits like those, no one would want any.

    1. Re:Ballmer still did everything wrong by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Microsoft's major mistake under Ballmer was mucking w/ the Windows OS. Windows 7 had attained a point where it was just good enough, and simply changing the flag to a window, and the underlying kernel, and adding a few Aero themes and then calling it Windows 8 would have been rather adequate. Also, they could have packed VirtualPC supporting every preceding version of Windows - from 3.1 to XP.

      Instead of that disaster called Windows RT, Microsoft could have released a very specific ARM based OS (preferably, extended to cover MIPS as well) w/ a different name and brand. Put that on what became the Surface RT as well as the Lumia and other phones, but don't call it Windows. That way, nobody would have associated them either w/ Windows CE, nor expected them to be anything similar to Windows. Their desktop customers would still have been happy, while their mobile customers might have given them a fairer look, since they could have had a sweet spot b/w Apple, which is pretty expensive, and Google, which plays havoc w/ privacy. Since Microsoft would have sold this OS to OEMs, that would have enabled them to keep prices below Apple and segment the market, while their model (still) didn't depend on selling private info.

      Another thing about the Surface - they should have introduced Surfaces that would work w/ any vendor. They do have Surfaces that work w/ GSM carriers, like AT&T or T-Mo, but they don't work w/ Verizon or Sprint. While the carriers may have balked at Windows Phone, they might have been more open to Surface had it come w/ cellular capabilities

    2. Re:Ballmer still did everything wrong by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Microsoft made a mistake in assuming its customers were locked in and could never abandon ship. So they could spend the billions and assume they'd make double that back, since no one would dare leave and use something else. Microsoft also had an arrogance that made them think they could dominate any market no matter how late to the game they came or how inept their were. Since they had essentially a Windows monopoly they wanted to make use of that to force their way into other markets and lock them down.

    3. Re:Ballmer still did everything wrong by guacamole · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This is a great post. Microsoft and its followers have created some kind of a cult following around the Surface Pro "tablets", and they actually claim it is a good "tablet", actually the best out there. But in reality the Surface Pro is basically an PC Ultrabook, with a detacheable keyboard. It's very lousy as a tablet, when used in tablet-mode without keyboard, and it's a lousy laptop too, because it's pretty awkward to use this thing as "LAPtop". Most Surface Pro users, use this device as a PC ultrabook, with a keyboard attached while telling everyone "what a great tablet, the best". In the end, their needs would have been served much better by a convertible ultrabook such as the Lenovo Yoga series.

      The shocking thing about this whole story is that Microsoft has ruined its OS for the desktop and notebook users, which are like 99% of all Windows users, in order to promote Windows on these "mobile" devices. In reality, both microsoft tablet and phone are nearly dead, while the desktop users are stuck with an OS that is having an identity crisis.

    4. Re:Ballmer still did everything wrong by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      It's funny you should mention MIPS because Windows NT used to run on MIPS, back when it was more flexible. It seems every generation of Windows becomes less flexible in some way. Nowadays, Windows can't even render the "Windows classic" skin from Windows 2000 (the only Windows theme I ever liked), which was removed from Windows 8. I guess Windows isn't powerful or flexible enough to do that kind of thing any more.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    5. Re:Ballmer still did everything wrong by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Here's what it boils down to. Microsoft looked at Apple pulling in 30% of every app in their app store and got a raging hard-on for that kind of revenue and basically sacrificed everything good about Windows to try to achieve the same thing. Of course, they totally failed and we ended up with the ugliest version of Windows in 20+ years as a result.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  4. ready, and 3, 2, 1 (lines of coke) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Developers! Developers! Developers!
    Smartphones! Smartphones! Smartphones!

  5. Ballmer was correct by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Microsoft has never had the competence to develop something you'd want to use as a phone. I've owned a couple Windows Phones and several Windows PDAs and they are simply not capable of developing an operating system sufficiently reliable or usable for that purpose. But they are capable of producing a decent general-purpose computing device. Windows Phone is dead last in the market, and it always will be. Ballmer was right.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Ballmer was correct by matushorvath · · Score: 1

      Apple and Google have decided to throw away any compatibility with computers when they developed their mobile OS. You can't run the same application on your iPhone or an Android phone and on your computer.

      Microsoft has decided to go the other way, sacrifice usability but maintain the compatibility. You could technically take an application from your computer and run it on your tablet or phone. They own most of the desktop OS market, so why throw it all away and make a completely incompatible device? Let's make the desktop OS more mobile-like and the phone OS more desktop-like, and we will meet in the middle and end up with just one OS to rule them all.

      And then they found out that this does not make much sense. You don't need the application that's optimized for a 24" screen with a mouse and a keyboard to run on your phone. You also don't need the application that's optimized for a 7" touch screen to run on your desktop. So they disabled the support for Win32 on Windows RT, never even supported Win32 on mobiles, and the Metro applications for Windows 8 never really took off.

      They ended up with a less usable mobile OS that is theoretically able to run desktop apps but nobody cares, and a less usable Windows 8 that is theoretically able to run mobile apps but also nobody cares. To save their business, they had to step back with Windows 10 because people did not want to upgrade from Windows 7, and they seem to have completely abandoned the idea of Windows running on phones.

      And Steve Ballmer is proud of his achievements. LOL.

    2. Re:Ballmer was correct by nomadic · · Score: 1

      I thought the Windows Phone had the best phone OS around. It was perfectly reliable and useful, and had a better interface than Android or iOS and better performance. The problem was just the apps weren't there.

    3. Re:Ballmer was correct by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Well, you can't take the application and run it elsewhere easily, but you could take the data files. So there were two mistakes; first trying to make the applications portable. Microsoft knows this is a problem because whenever they create a "simple" or "home" application they don't use the absurd Office formats.

    4. Re:Ballmer was correct by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      You just do not get it. For some people, a minority, say 1%, cheating is most emphatically winning. Winning for them is all that counts, Ballmer scammed everyone including Gates, the smarmy insurance salesman, who brought nothing to M$ except smarmy manipulative sales tactics. Did Ballmer win for taking credit for other people's efforts, did Ballmer win for blaming others for his own mistakes, as far as Ballmer is concerned, he is rich, he won, everyone else is stupid for no recognising his true genius at lying, cheating and stealing (and in every other way fucking up ie MSN is a major fuck up). We are the ones who should be ashamed for allowing a society that functions around that psychopathic deceit.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    5. Re: Ballmer was correct by jezwel · · Score: 1
      This is exactly what Microsoft needed to do, with the release of Windows 8 - it just took a few more years & iterations for mobile hardware to be capable enough to run Win10.

      The OS should have been:
      Win7 interface when docked with a screen.
      Win 8 mobile interface when standalone.

      Device consolidation is happening.
      Microsoft could have been getting every single $$$ of our hardware budget in addition to the chunk of software licence/assurance revenue. They might be able to come in from behind if they can get compelling Win10 x86 compatible devices out with great a great docking system.

  6. Ballmer's only regret is this?? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fine example of selective memory...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Ballmer's only regret is this?? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Well, it's the only thing he does regret. There's plenty more he should. And probably would if he was smart.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Ballmer's only regret is this?? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      He made plenty of mistakes (but so does every CEO as you can't predict the future perfectly), but on the whole he was extremely successful CEO that increased profit and revenue throughout his tenure. He certainly missed the smartphone boat, but he got the Surface right (after the initial dud that was RT).

    3. Re:Ballmer's only regret is this?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This really isn't surprising though. He can't remember anything from the half of his time he spent on the right side of the Ballmer peak.

  7. Welcome to Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mr.Steve Ballmer. Would you like a chair to throw with that?

    1. Re:Welcome to Slashdot by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      Mr.Steve Ballmer. Would you like a chair to throw with that?

      I think Steve Ballmer is responsible for the widespread adoption of "stand-up" meetings.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  8. Insert anti Apple FUD .. by khz6955 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "Steve Ballmer once said .. that he failed to anticipate carriers subsidizing the cost of the phone. "

    Any actual hard facts that the only reason the iPhone succeeded was that the carriers subsidised it. Or is this yet another example of Microsoft respectively rewriting historical facts to present itself in a better light.

    1. Re:Insert anti Apple FUD .. by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Don't be too surprised; I'll give you an insider tip from the tech world: As a linux guy, I often hear about new microsoft offerings, mostly because people like to make rude jokes about them. That said, jokes about Surface are sooo last year. What I hear is that it is actually nice hardware, and linux works perfectly on it.

      I'm not really surprised. I stopped using MS software in the 90s, but these days I'm using MS keyboards. Their hardware has always been pretty good. It is a reasonable direction for them to go.

  9. wake up, Ballmer by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem with Microsoft's phone effort wasn't that Microsoft didn't invest in it soon enough or early enough; in fact, Microsoft was the dominant smartphone player prior to iPhone. The reason Microsoft lost in the smartphone market was because their product sucked.

    1. Re:wake up, Ballmer by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      What? sorry but the Blackberry and Palm Treo was the defacto standard in the smartphone world before apple. Windows CE phones were an utter mess and purchased by very few. Business communications was OWNED by blackberry back then.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:wake up, Ballmer by djbckr · · Score: 1

      ... because their product sucked.

      True. I had the unfortunate experience of owning a Windows phone for a while. About every other call I got would crash the entire thing. Worthless. When I would use the features of the phone (browser, mostly) it would crash regularly.

    3. Re:wake up, Ballmer by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      What? sorry but the Blackberry and Palm Treo was the defacto standard in the smartphone world before apple.

      No, not really. Worldwide, in 2007, "Symbian" had the largest market share, followed by Microsoft, RIM, and Palm. But Microsoft and Palm were really the only ones that had anything like a modern smartphone and app experience. Microsoft was also widely used for PDAs, tablets, and verticals.

      You can quibble about whether "dominant" is the right term for that market situation; the point is, however, that Microsoft was a big and important player with a lot developers when iPhone just got started. Microsoft, like Symbian, RIM, and Palm, lost because Android and iOS were just better systems.

    4. Re:wake up, Ballmer by g01d4 · · Score: 1

      The reason Microsoft lost in the smartphone market was because there wasn't enough of a corporate legacy they could leverage like they could with personal computer software after filling the vacancy left by IBM. Smartphones were an open, mostly consumer market where they had to compete on more of an equal footing.

    5. Re:wake up, Ballmer by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      The problem with Microsoft's phone effort wasn't that Microsoft didn't invest in it soon enough...The reason Microsoft lost in the smartphone market was because their product sucked.

      So the real debate was over how to suck.

      MS has traditionally thrown essentially beta editions out at relatively low prices or as part of bundles, and then let the market and time debug it. But that doesn't work well with hardware.

      With software, a bad product doesn't keep you from using your computer for other things. But bad hardware means you purchased a brick.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  10. Re:Linux sucks by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    If my business was selling snakeoil, I'd be calling medicine cancer, too.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. Proof of Ballmer's incompetence... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Honestly Gates knew how to run a business and he knew that cell phone hardware was a stupid idea. And the world did prove gates right. The first mess starting with the BlackJack phones running WinCE and then the reboot attempt with the windows OS phones, every single attempt was a complete failure.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  12. self-absorbed idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I thought .

    this is where the fail begins

  13. Yes, but by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    Who cares what Fat Skeletor has to say?

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  14. phone subsidies by mixed_signal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apparently Ballmer didn't know squat about the phone business, and didn't bother to ask. Classic behavior for American financial types running technology businesses. Carriers had been subsidizing mobile phone costs since at least the mid-1990s after the PCS spectrum auctions.

    From the Bloomberg article,
    "I wish I'd thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators," [Ballmer] said.

    1. Re:phone subsidies by PPH · · Score: 1

      "I wish I'd thought ...." [Ballmer] said.

      Pretty well sums up his time at Microsoft.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  15. Re:BS by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Given its price tag, I can't see how it loses money

  16. Re:Ballmer See by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    Ballmer Smash

    FTFY

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  17. Re:BS by stooo · · Score: 1

    by not being sold.

    --
    aaaaaaa
  18. Re:Microsoft is like a cancer. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    At least once MS is at the leading edge of development: Outsourcing C-Level Management to India.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.