Ballmer: 'Google not a major mobile competitor'

"I don't really understand their strategy"

That is why you fail.

I'd like to see the Android take off and dominate just for another chance to hear about Ballmer throwing chairs.

Steve "Crystal" Ballmer in the house!

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

Seems that Bill taught Steve everything he knew about predicting the future...

Mine's the one with more than 640k of RAM in the pocket.

Direct sales isn't the only way of measuring success

Sometimes its about brand awareness and stopping your competitors from winning. The two major cola companies pump millions into advertising too keep their brand at the top despite competition from store-brand colas.

WindowsCE is not windows xp/vista as we know it, but MS has a "windows everywhere" strategy which tries to make "windows" synonymous with computers/gadgets. MS has to keep the brand and logos in front of people to prevent others from edging MS out of the market and confining it to desktop business PCs only. As the IPhone demonstrates, once you aren't locked into windows apps, people are happy to pass on the windows os.

For Google, its about keeping the non-ms market alive, preventing windows lock-in and allowing apps to be moved from an ms-only platform to the web. Those apps are then easily accessible from PCs which breaks the windows-only dependency of pc applications and offers a way to leverage Google's strengths - scalability, global access and reliability to gain entry to corporate services and therefore corporate cash.

Android isn't about making cash, its about promoting the internet in general over windows in particular.

Tux, 'cos he's cool!

Android trounces windows mobile

After 1 week of using the G1 I have almost been sold. I did expect it to be an half baked attempt at an iPhone killer. But it seems that what has happened is that Google set aim for the iPhone, missed woefully on that target, but hit windows mobile right between the eyes instead. As a phone, it completely trounces windows mobile (except if you have an absolute need to talk with MS exchange)

Fear is what I hear in Ballmers voice.

Zune rings a bell

"They've got some smart guys and hire a lot of people — blah-di-blah-di-blah," Ballmer said of his rival. "They start out way behind in a certain sense, and we'll see how they do."

Could say the same about Zune, search, virtualisation.

Mr. Ballmer is such an arrogant b*stard. I think we can see MS sliding into oblivion under his reign.

This from a satisfaction report from JD Powers:

the major makers sitting below the average were those who use Windows Mobile heavily or exclusively for their smartphones, such as HTC and Motorola.

M$ stock price must fall every time this guy opens his mouth...

"'Hey, we just launched a new product that has no revenue model — yeah, cheer for me,' I'm not sure my investors would take that very well, but that's what Google's telling their investors about Android,""

No, that's not what Google is telling their investors... Its all about Android Market and the ecosystem that it no doubt will become. Ballmer completely fails to see the bigger picture.

"If somebody thinks the formula is you give away your operating system to get search (usage), the operators are much too smart; they'll know they can still ask to be paid to carry your service."

Ballmer is about a thousand yards wide of the mark... again. Google wont need to pay operators to "carry" its marketplace. Ballmers comments are clearly illustrative of an individual who simply does not understand in any way shape or form any business model or marketplace where the operating system itself (Microsoft's cash cow and cocaine like addiction) is not your source of income. Ballmer is a dinosaur who can't get his head around any strategy that does not sound like, "How will this sell more copies of Windows ?"

"Google doesn't exactly bubble to the top of the list of the toughest competitors we've got going in mobile,"

Microsoft isn't a competitor in Mobile. It potentially loses half the market by default simply because it doesn't even have an operating system that runs on ARM processors. And in this market, most of its competitors are open source. Furthermore, Microsoft simply does not exist in the kind of market that Google aims to both foster and capture revenues from. Ballmer and the prevailing culture within Microsoft is not in touch with where markets and sources of revenue are moving, and I don't believe this corporation is really going to change any time soon. The day is coming when the value of Microsoft shares will be reported in terms of cents rather than dollars.

Paris, because she doesn't get it either.

The Balltard does it again!

He is worse than Palin!

He doesn't get it, it's about opening up mobile platforms, Google will offer a more open platform and force others to join the party, we have seen this before.

As for them being a late comer, so were MS and so were Apple but look around, MS has the business crowd mainly due to support for their proprietary protocols, and Apple got a lift from their cult members.

Google will get a lift from their cool apps and simple way of doing things, I'm waiting for a decent Android phone, HTC make those awful MS mobiles after all.

Watch out Balltard, if you don't get it, you wont get any.

Deluded.

"Hey, we just launched a new product that has no revenue model — yeah, cheer for me,' I'm not sure my investors would take that very well"

You know what your investors won't take very well Steve? You being so bloody delusional.

Surely he can't believe half of what he says. But by saying it, he's making himself look stupid. If I was an investor, I'd be really worried if MS actually didn't view Google as a competitor in mobile. So why say it?

Idiot.

Paris, 'cos she's an interesting (revenue) model.

Hmmmm

Personally I have to say I sit in the middle on this one. Whilst some of Steve's arguments are vaugely viable I can see that he's being very short sighted.

I don't think Googles attempts with Android are to get more people to "search" through google at all really, as pointed out I think it's about creating brand awareness but also putting something out there which ultimatley will probably be developed into a very powerful OS and like it or not knock WM. However I do have reservations, blackberry for example (in my experience looking after messaging for a large company) have an excellent platform, it's not perfect but in terms of handset stability, predictability and backend reliability it's pretty good. YES before anyone says anything I know we've seen the relay fall over a few times but actually those times are fairly limited compared with the number of times our mobile telco has randomly dropped data in our area and uptime is certainly more than our active sync users.

Is it the iPhone? Nope,, certainly not, if it had blackberry connect would it be more attractive to enterprise? - yes probably, but I'm not so sure it will compete with blackberry handsets and software, 4.5 for the 83xx series for example wraps up a lot of previous issues and whilst RIM have generally failed to do anything groundbreaking the storm is a sign of things to come...

It's a shame that Microsoft can't get Windows Mobile right, quite why they believe that medium/ent's want a bunch of devices they can't control and have no visability of hanging off the end of their network is beyond me, releasing an expesnive and poorly supported (in the handset market) BES equivilant (System Centre Mobile DM) is frankly just poor, they should have had this wrapped up a long time ago if they wanted to compete.

Personally I can see windows mobile lasting on devices, not sure if those devices will be phones and then I think that's where Google can step up the game a little, or a very creative business can step in and develop a paid version of Android that picks up where windows mobile left off.

The trouble with Microsoft it seems is that they are very polarised, some things they do are far too whacky and people fail to see where they fit in, and some things they do are so far in the past that people laugh but still go out and buy the stuff anyway, just because it's easier not to push the limits of what you are trying to do. Characters like Stevie boy don't really help their cause, but it does get them media exposure.

re: Odd

What's even odder is that MS are not a monopoly because you can buy Mac, yet Google ARE a monopoly because there's no point going for Yahoo!.

Or people like you, only concerned about monopoly badness when it's not MS.

THAT'S Odd!