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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!!
(Score: 3, Funny) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:55PM (6 children)
Microsoft's primary client base was, and still is business. Suits and ties, but not as stuffy and rigid as IBM was. Their core competency was programming languages. They appealed to the home/hobbyist/enthusiast/budget market with low cost and easy to use products. They found themselves in a good position when IBM let them license DOS to others, they were allowed to do early development for the Macintosh, they benefited greatly when IBM let OS/2 fizzle out, and as a result Microsoft's office products (brought over from the Mac) and Windows became very successful (although not technically great products). Microsoft did try to expand in to other markets at times, but not very successfully.
Mobile Windows CE didn't really catch on with Windows users because it simply WASN'T Windows and could not run Windows software. The same thing doomed the DEC Alpha port of Windows NT. Honestly, I'm surprised the x64 version of Windows took off like it did. (Bla, bla, bla more memory, 64-bit... you know the DEC Alpha was a 64-bit CPU, right?)
And who is the market for computerized "phones"? As it turns out, it is primarily teenage girls, hipsters, and drooling moronic consumertards. The entire reason they buy "smart" phones is so they can do on-line shopping without having to own a computer with Microsoft Windows and all the headaches that come along with it.
If I were Microsoft, I would want to stay the hell out of that too. Cell phones are replaceable, ephemeral gadgets. As much as we hate it, Windows is here for the long term to run software to get actual serious WORK done.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:06PM (4 children)
My experience is just the opposite: Windows is here (due to inertial) to PREVENT actual serious work from getting done. It just so happens that entirely industries have cropped up around Windows to prevent Windows from preventing real work from getting done.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:44PM
Those of us who didn't do Windows had to substitute Usenet for Minesweeper.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday June 25 2019, @07:28PM (1 child)
I normally wouldn't do this, but the spelling errors in my posting are really annoying me. It should have read:
My experience is just the opposite: Windows is here for the long term (due to inertia) to PREVENT actual serious work from getting done. It just so happens that entire industries have cropped up around Windows to prevent Windows from preventing real work from getting done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @01:44AM
You need a nice guy like Clippy to help you prevent such mistakes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:24PM
They found themselves in a good position when IBM were
a) fooled into believing Billyboy had an OS (what he had was a BASIC interpreter)
b) persuaded to sign the world's worst contract.
If this happened in Africa, people would blame it on voodoo - it is so far beyond the
average scale of corruption in Africa.