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Bill Gates Calls Losing the Smartphone Market to Android His "Greatest Mistake"

posted by takyon on Tuesday June 25 2019, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the latest-mistake dept.

aristarchus writes:

Bill Gates calls losing the smartphone market to Android his "greatest mistake"

It is rare to see a company owning up to their mistakes but in a Techcrunch interview published yesterday ex-Microsoft CEO and founder Bill Gates just did, calling losing the smartphone market to Google's Android his "greatest mistake."

I am stifling myself with ecto-ironic beams of death, to avoid commenting on the initial sentence. Help me, Soylentils!

He also owes up to mismanagement – it was a war which Microsoft could have won – Windows Mobile preceded Android by nearly 10 years, but Microsoft never understood the importance of mobile, never gave it adequate resources, was distracted by desktop priorities and was constantly changing direction.

[...] The point of this article is not to replay the past, but to counter this view expressed by those who take Microsoft's current share price as proof that losing mobile was actually a happy accident:

$MSFT, in 3yrs, has climbed from $35 to an all time high of $137 w/ positive Q3FY19 gains in generally every business, incl. Windows.
...but please tell me more abt how Microsoft's downfall will be a consequence of its retreat from Windows Phone, Microsoft Band, & Groove Music. pic.twitter.com/4IOb6ptEJb

— kurtsh (@kurtsh) June 22, 2019

Microsoft's future is in bitcoin. You heard it here first!!

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Entropy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by Entropy (4228) on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:11PM (#859693)

    No thanks. My phone works today, and won't be force-updated into something that fails tomorrow thanks to Android. Heck iPad won't even force update me into something that fails to work tomorrow. Windows 10 speciality is to magically break your applications for an OS update you didn't want or need.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:39PM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:39PM (#859725)

    But how long will it be before you are forced to replace your smartphone because the non-removable battery dies or the carrier service or apps require a newer one?

    While Windows 10 has turned to utter shit, smart phones are not exactly a panacea.