All Articles Tagged ballmer

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!… Judges Round!

Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no’s of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it’s time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Ed Colligan:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Daily Double-Talk

Steve Ballmer:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Final Jeopardy!

“Mike Lazaridis”:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

And to top it all off:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Judges?

10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who’s also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er… Anyone heard from Palm lately?

And the Winner Is!

None of the players today.

For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball’s awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew’s Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.

Taking a break from not buying Yahoo! and single-handidly driving the internet Monkey Boy dance phenomena, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer decided to throw a little advice Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ way: Break up the iPhone! (Please!)

Right now, of course, Apple tightly integrates both the iPhone hardware and software, just like they do with the Mac. This gives them unrivaled fit and finish and ensures developers (and consumers) a unified platform, end to end. It also ensures Apple — who makes their money on hardware, not software — very good margins and, thus far, very profitable business.

Enter Steve Ballmer’s plea, according to Ars Technica:

[Ballmer]’s expecting Apple to do poorly in both the smartphone and notebook markets over the next five years, mostly because the company continues to stand by its rather un-Microsoft-like integration of both proprietary software and proprietary hardware.

For the full video interview, see ZDnet.

For a reality check, see how the current iPhone model has rejuvenated an industry and led to a bevy of iClones, while Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 has been pushed back to 2009, meaning we won’t even begin to see a 2007 iPhone competitive device running anything Microsoft until 2010…

So, yeah, we’re sure Jobs will get right on that…

But what do you think? Should Apple scrap the iPhone model and go the Microsoft route?

Microsoft’s most recent 10K filing with the SEC gives every indication you-know-who may be bringing them some future pain:

A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls both the software and hardware elements of a product, has been successful with certain consumer products such as personal computers, mobile phones and digital music players

Sure, Microsoft has their Xbox and Zune end-to-end business models, the former of which has enjoyed both success and red-ring framed troubles, and the latter of which is jettisoning even its… er… more eccentric fanbase, but they’ve yet to enjoy iPod-level triumph in the space.

To put this in some perspective, we know Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, has said Apple’s tight integration is something they want to emulate going forward, but Microsoft basically invented software as the mega-business. They’ve made gatestillions of dollars on software and enjoy a monopoly level position in both PC OS and Office applications.

So, even as Apple sold a million iPhone 3Gs in a weekend, and Steve Jobs wants 1% of the global mobile market, and 10 million units shipped short term, Microsoft came close to moving 20 million software licenses for Windows Mobile in the last year, and even as Mac sales keep inching on up, Microsoft still sits so far atop that market share mountain, its basically everest.

Still, if we discount Microsoft’s endemic — and groundless — Apple (and now Google) envy, could Ballmer and co. seriously still see Apple’s 360 degree, spherically integrated business model as a threat? And if so, why?

Posted from my iPhone

Never have I seen a thousand pound gorilla play such defense:

Apple: In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.

Seriously, Microsoft? Seriously? You pretty much invented the software industry and helped commoditize the PC business to an extent that Windows runs on an amount of servers, desktops, laptops, and — yes — even handsets, so vast it blots out the stars, and you’re re-focusing your business model on being more like Apple?

Seriously?

Now, I love Apple. My server, desktop, laptop, and handset were all designed in Cupertino, and their market share may one day approach 10%… but that’s the thing. 10%. (Not counting iPod here because, try as it might, Zune isn’t even really in that business).

You’re the gourmet restaurant on one side of the street or you’re the dozens of McDonalds on the other. Try to build your fine+fast eatery in the middle and… you get rammed by the oncoming bus (or Gordon Ramsey, whichever gets there first).

Instead of obsessing over Apple (and Google), how about spending some time on Microsoft. Your branding is a mess (8 word product names with inconsistent and seemingly random uses of Windows and LIVE! may work for puzzle games, but not consumer interest), your SKU’s are terminally skewed, and you’re increasingly at cross-purposes between partner platforms and in-house “whole widget” approaches. Heck, you’re making Yahoo! seem focused right now.

Head on over to WMExperts for more complete coverage and analysis. And to find out if Dieter somehow works ZOMG! Zune Phone… er… zPhone… er… xPhone… er… Phone for Windows LIVE! into the post…  

We just finished watching the day 1 keynote by Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO), and Dieter has posted the details up on WMExperts.com. It was a fair keynote; Ballmer was better in person than I thought he would be. His stage voice and personality are both ridiculously brash.

He had a lot to say about Windows Mobile, this of course being a mobile conference. He didn’t have a lot to say in regards to competition with the iPhone. Windows Live Search, Microsoft’s one-stop app for personal searches, crashed on stage. The presenter handled it quite well, there will be no horror stories of 5 minute waits for devices to reboot, etc.

The biggest news of his keynote is that Microsoft is bringing all of the parts of Windows Mobile phones further into their domain network structure. Windows Mobile devices will be further managed by the network administrators. They can push applications out, settings, practically the entire phone experience. It looks like it will be quite popular with the enterprise; but not by any means at the cost of the iPhone. No, this isn’t a shot across the iPhone’s bow. It’s a direct hit on Blackberry. I’ve said over and over in our Treocast podcasts that RiM plays a very dangerous game in the mobile space — they compete directly with Microsoft, and their job just got a lot harder.

It’s curious to me that Ballmer never really even mentions Google. Thinly-veiled insults are hurled their way a fair amount by both Ballmer and former Seahawks player / former U.S. Representative / current CTIA president Steve Largent, but Microsoft curiously has the decency to mention Yahoo!. Anyway, we’re off to the show floor. I’ll be posting more later.

In a recent interview with USA Today, Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) stated several things, none of which are really news. He promised to not come out with a Zune phone, he made some claims about what a great CEO he was, etc. This quote interested me, though: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” That’s really interesting. He thinks they’ll see “2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.” Really, really interesting. According to Steve Jobs in his keynote this January, Apple is aiming for 1% of the phone market one year after the iPhone comes out. Pishposh! That’s just 10 million phones! At $500 each that’s just… oh wait. That’s $5 billion. By Ballmer’s own estimates, it’s $15 billion. And this is likely a zero-sum equation — people that get the iPhone probably won’t get a Windows Mobile phone.

Update:Macworld.co.uk seems to assert Microsoft only has about 5.6% of the mobile market. This puts another quote of his in perspective — “Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market?” He doesn’t have 96% of the market, not in this segment anyway. He’s sweating bullets in this market segment.

In other news, he promised to not release a Zune with phone features, stating “It’s not a concept you’ll ever get from us.” I’m not sure I believe him — if Linux phones really have 3 times more market share than Windows Mobile, I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a team on it already.

Technorati Tags: Ballmer, editorial, Microsoft, news, Zune