CEOh-Snap! Mr. Ballmer, Think of Windows Phone as a Broken iPhone…
TiPb. Heart. Steve. Ballmer. Microsoft’s #2 has really become #1 in our CEOh-Snap department. See, he doesn’t just hit the mic, he pummels it to bloody, infuriating, borderline committable pulp. This time, however, D|All Things Digital brings us a little CEOh-Snap back in the form of Ballmer being on the receiving end for once, via an unhappy questioner at the CIO Summit:
“With platforms like the Google phone and iPhone coming out, it’s really tough to continue to stand behind Windows Mobile when our employees are bringing these consumer devices into our environments,” the questioner explained. “And in your presentation you put Windows Mobile right in the center there, but it was a phone that doesn’t work in America and an operating system that you haven’t released. I’m wondering what your commitment is to continuing to get newer versions of the operating system in our hands so that we don’t have to fight this battle on the ground.”
Ballmer’s come back? WinPho 6.5 this year is significant but not everything they want for higher-end phones; that’ll come next year(!) with WinPho 7. Microsoft is accelerating their efforts, and people still bought more Windows Mobile devices than iPhone last year anyway, so: nyah!
(Though we’d remind Mr. Ballmer that Apple’s international roll-out really only began in July 2008, more than half-way through the year, and he’s welcome to check the sales numbers for Q3 2008 to see how that worked out for everyone…)
March 5th, 2009 at 10:51 am
LOL microsoft really is fighting a losing battle here
March 5th, 2009 at 11:04 am
@iAirmanshirk, you got that right. Windows Mobile 7 or whatever M$ will call it, should have been out NOW or months ago.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Balmer is proving to be more naive than once thought.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Pity in Q4 Apple only shipped 4.4 million, when Win Mo did 5. But look at Q3! Q3 was GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am
@Fred, how many different brands and phones is WM currently on compared to a single iPhone? All I have to say. I’ll take quality over quantity any day.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Ballmer is out of touch with reality. MS has become the IBM of 1982 in the 21st century. They are as thick as a whale omelet these days. They need to quit making excuses and drop a few pounds of ego.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
whale omelet?
March 5th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Sounds pretty thick…
March 5th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I have even less respect for the poor slugs who were actually there wasting their lives asking about it. They make Ballmer look brilliant by comparison.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I carried a Win Mobile device for 2 years. Learned it inside and out and used it to it’s maximum (when it wasn’t crashing). I switched to the iPhone 3G and it was like coming out of a dark cave and into the light of day. I’m not saying the iPhone is perfect, but it is 10 times more functional and reliable than WinPho will ever be.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
what is WinPho? Why do you call it that?! .. >:
March 5th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
@ChaBolt:
If Windows Mobile was WinMo, I figure Windows Phone should be WinPho, no?
March 5th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Nah is just pure mis-management!
Ballmer lives in a self created bubble cultivated by people who are under him who stroke his ego. Those who are under him basically lie “yeah were the best”
Microsoft has talented peope working but they’re just spread too thin. They got there hands on to many hardware trying to make it work. Think with all bugs patches on the iPhone now add 100 more different phones to list. Apple would crumble like microsoft is now. Same thing with PC.
Steve jobs is a different animal. Big time micro manager! I bet he over sees the janitors at Apple headquaters. If a cat takes a dump, Jobs knows about it.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:10 am
@Chris…
I used one for five years. It was excrutiating so I’m with you on that one. The final thing that did it for me was one day when I tried to compile a list of faults with the OS and it crashed halfway through!!