Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft CEO who likes to say YAAAARGH a lot, has decided that all this iPhone business is merely a blip on the economic radar. The real smartphone success story, says Steve, is the dual-pronged attack of Android and Windows Mobile. Try telling that to Bill Gates’ wife.
Steve Ballmer made the somewhat reality-defying pronouncement during a midyear update to industry analysts. Thing is, we think he’s been sucking the thin air surrounding his ivory tower too long, it’s clearly gone to his head.
Nokia is the actual market leader – its 42 percent market share far outstrips RIM’s BlackBerry handsets and the iPhone. Windows Mobile lies in fourth place, according to a recent report by Gartner. What’s more, 80 percent of those Windows Mobiles are made by a single manufacturer, HTC.
Ballmer did admit that the iPhone has “consumer market mojo,” which we think is corporate speak for “sells by the skipload and is really popular”.
Despite succeeding in the two basic ways that any consumer product needs to, however, Steve Ballmer thinks that the iPhone does not have the same potential as Windows Mobile and Android.
This is not the first time Ballmer has dissed the iPhone in public, calling the device “The most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business because it doesn’t have a keyboard,” in a CNBC shortly after the phone launched.
We think Ballmer’s statements tell us something else, though. He has lost sight of what smartphones really are. They’re not just business phones any more. They’re part and parcel of everyday life for more people than ever. We’ve already explained how Android will kill Windows Mobile next year, and why Windows Mobile 6.5 demonstrates Microsoft’s supreme misunderstanding of how the OS should work.
But what do you think? Is Ballmer off his rocker? Give us a shout below.
TBC | £TBC | Microsoft (via MacWorld UK)
