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 $137 w/ positive Q3FY19 gains in generally every business, incl. Windows.
...but please tell me more abt how Microsoft's downfall will be a consequence of its retreat from Windows Phone, Microsoft Band, & Groove Music. pic.twitter.com/4IOb6ptEJb— kurtsh (@kurtsh) June 22, 2019
Microsoft's future is in bitcoin. You heard it here first!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:51AM (5 children)
... was obviously high in the chain of command, but who the hell thought that slapping customers with a wet fish was a good marketing strategy.
By which I mean selling you products with crap software, and then refusing to provide updates with bug fixes.
The reason Apple succeeded in dominating the mobile phone industry in the early days was because, despite manufacturing both hardware and software,
it was clear they were going to provide software upgrades and bug fixes - although new OS versions might be a chargeable option.
I, and many colleagues, had been repeatedly shafted by "WinCE" and like shite. You not only bought the products, you bought into the concept, buying
stands, adaptors and stuff, which cost a lot of money. As soon as you realised how crap the OS was, they released a new one, and refused to allow you to
update the old hardware, expecting you to buy new - making it blatantly obvious that you would be up the creak without a paddle again if you did!
Although I have never bought an Apple products, (I was over-committed to Nokia at the time, and as a FOSS supporter, went for Android early) I predicted,
loudly, and everywhere, that MS would never be able to survive in the phone world after the iPhone because the amount of abuse they had heaped on
existing customers ensured no one would ever buy an MS mobile product twice.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:12AM (1 child)
M$ could not gain more than a peak of just under 3% market share [blogs.com] because of two reasons. First, the obvious, is that their phone software was as bad as everything else they make. People may be inured to that on the desktop but on phones they still had a choice of better options. Second, speaking of choice, M$ had no way to leverage the desktop monopoly and extend it into the phone market and prevent buyers from exercising their choices.
Bill has been a one-trick pony all along since when, in the 1980s, IBM was punished for illegal behavior and forced by the courts to choose between hardware and software for the new PC market. That left an opening for Bill's mom to move in and set Bill to score a deal with IBM, giving him an overnight monopoly. He was able to extend that into the infamous, illegal per-processor fees. That, in turn, gave him a such a war chest that he could afford to lose money indefinitely in any area he chose just to ensure that no one else made any money there either, until he could leverage the desktop monopoly to get into the new market and take it over. Again, he couldn't do that with the mobile phone market and even after Microsoft killed Nokia [seekingalpha.com], there was still no way to leverage that desktop monopoly into a means of establishing a foothold in the phone market.
tldr; there was no way for Bill to leverage his desktop monopoly against the phone market
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:31PM
This. While BILLG will never admit the above, this is exactly why they lost the market.
The only reason MS ever succeed at anything was by leveraging their "windows monopoly" to force sales of whatever else it was they were pushing. And the only reason they were dominant in the PC OS market was their business deals with the makers that required a copy of windows be sold with every PC they shipped.
As a PC builder, what reason do you have to offer an "os free" version of your machine when you, the maker, would have to eat the windows tax. The result, unless one was willing to build from parts, it was not possible to buy a PC without sending money to MS. Many businesses drool over being able to create such a guaranteed revenue stream (this is the reason for the rise of all the 'subscription' software services lately, guaranteed revenue streams).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:04PM
Honestly i think most people could not care squat about updates.
The big selling point of iPhone was that it was a drop in upgrade for an iPod, but now you didn't have to carry a phone alongside it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bussdriver on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:09PM
Other than Microsoft's BASIC (1st product) they ALWAYS played catch up and missed almost everything. He didn't see DOS coming and even played catch up MS-DOS (bought the CP/M OS at the last second.) Once they had a monopoly Gates was good at ruthlessly and anti-competitively maintaining that; which they leveraged unfairly to push every failure... with MS-Office being one of their few successes (plus they bought Excel etc. so they don't get much credit there either.)
They didn't grasp smart phones at ALL; it was just catch up to integrating windows with phones for more VENDOR LOCK IN. Then when Apple showed everybody the future they played catch up AGAIN and like the Zune, their existing monopoly didn't prove capable of FORCING users outside their desktop monopoly. Furthermore, the Government (US & EU) did deter MS from pulling their old illegal tactics; otherwise iPods, iPhones, Andriod... would be attacked by Windows OS; MS software would act like malware on those devices as well. Just like MS illegally did in the 1980-1990s.
MS only made it by being "good enough" and/or the path of least resistance since they'd make sure the competition's users suffered more than their own as far as they could get away with... in the end they were finally caught. Unchecked, today they'd have gone so far as censoring website access before enough backlash stopped them (I don't mean obviously blocking; they always preferred excuses... like incompatibility, non-standard, insecure, etc.)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:49PM
It is not "Miss" Management.
Nor Mrs. Management.
But Ms. Management.
Because Microsoft = MS, and mismanagement is to "Miss" the next big thing. Almost twice. One was the internet which Bill Gates famously said was just "a fad". No doubt because it didn't fit in his world of desktop PCs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:51AM (3 children)
The simple truth that escapes mr. Gates is that microsoft was the most handicapped one in the race for the mobile.
Because the very thought of having whatever version of windows in your pocket at all times, should be classified as a form of torture.
Google could get away with putting a fragmented OS requiring constant updates and forcing obsolescence, which is exactly like windows, because it called itself something different than "microsoft" and called the stuff something different than "windows", and well because it started as a fairly open environment.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:21AM
The all-too frequent articles about his blatherings are quite uninteresting, uninformative, and irrelevant to anything happening in the industry today. That article, and he many others like it, was a poor choice for the main page. We got trolled again by aristarchus.
The only interesting take on Bill's most recent bloviations is that he appears to accidentally make a very strong case for regulating the hell out of that market [theverge.com]. He actually complains about not being able to leverage his desktop monoply like he had in other markets. Though in The Verge's article it is described as a "network effect" instead of illegal abuse of a monopoly. He really is a one-trick pony.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday June 25 2019, @11:49AM (1 child)
Back in the days of PDAs, pushing the Windows brand onto them mis-managed customers' expectations. The hardware wasn't anywhere near as capable as desktop machines were, so anyone who expected the same Windows interface and all their existing programs available on their new pocket device were bound to be disappointed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @12:29PM
By 2008, Gates was no longer CEO And before this time Nokia was dominate with its own OS. There was simply no way to market an OS only. You had to do the phone and OS together, exactly like Apple did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @11:15AM (12 children)
And it turns out Windows isn't a great mobile OS. Apple and Google both realized early on that the killer app for phones was the web. Microsoft never really got the hang of that, and in the mid-2000s was still trying to force the web to follow Microsoft rules rather than just develop new ways to take advantage of it. Microsoft was so afraid of losing their monopoly that they just stuck their head in the sand when they weren't able to control and make everything be Windows.
Early iPhones didn't even have the app store. Everything had to be done with web apps. Google, of course, was always web-first. Microsoft was still stuffing cramped, awkward PC software into a form factor that didn't fit.
Priorities and resources certainly weren't the problem. Android was developed for what Microsoft spends on coffee. They just didn't build any software that anyone wanted to use.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday June 25 2019, @11:53AM (5 children)
Strange, given the dominance of Internet Explorer on the desktop.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Tuesday June 25 2019, @12:48PM (3 children)
As I recall now but wasn't IE more of an after thought when MS saw the rise of Netscape and wanted to control the Internet to. They had sort of completely missed it at first thinking that people wouldn't care much. Then they just bundled IE with the OS and *bam* instant scene domination. Then came the DOJ and started to poke around. So perhaps it wasn't really worth it considering the decade or so of trouble that followed.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)
IE and consumer internet access was an afterthought. When Windows 95 was developed and released, Microsoft was competing against information services, not the Internet. They had their own proprietary MSN service and were competing against Compuserve and AOL. TCP/IP networking was a headache to load and properly configure and it used a lot more memory.
It was really an incredible phenomena that few could have predicted. A lot of little independent service providers popped up, piggybacking on the POTS phone system for dial-up, providing a connection to the internet, and people set up their own information services where anyone using ANY internet service provider could access them.
This would not happen again today. It would be a choice between Facebook on-line service or Twitter on-line service.
Then, backpedaling with Windows 98 and IE 4 to crush Netscape they made IE an unremovable "OS component", changed the UI so you couldn't breathe without touching IE, and broke many legs getting programmers to make their desktop software to absolutely require IE. Such a mess that IE is still hiding under Microsoft Edge in Windows 10. Removing it would break things.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday June 25 2019, @06:57PM
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 26 2019, @12:04AM
Windows 95 was released with no browser at all originally. I bought a copy of Netscape Navigator for about $20 (I think) which may have been the only choice at the time.
Microsoft killed Netscape dead by giving IE away for free.
I seem to remember thinking IE 5 was the bees' knees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:53PM
You need to read Gates' book, "The Road with a Head", where he totally missed the importance of networking, let alone on the scale of the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:14PM (2 children)
The web on mobile sucked back then, no matter what Apple and Google did. The SoCs were just not capable of handling desktop grade web sites.
Notice how quickly the focus moved to service specific apps once given the opportunity (after all, the original iPhone didn't have any semblance of apps at launch).
Nah, the big sell was media on a wifi capable device. Apple had a head start there via ITMS and the iPhone being a drop in replacement for an iPod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:47PM
I used the iPod Touch to browse the web and watch videos back in the day. I think it was 1st or 2nd gen. The experience was often bad but it was still epic.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 26 2019, @12:09AM
I seem to remember the big sell with the original iPhone was that it wasn't a Blackberry (which some of my users at the time hated).
The email experience for the end users was really good if I remember correctly. We did have a huge problem with people stealing them from the couriers though.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:19PM (2 children)
it turns out Windows isn't a great mobile OS.
Windows Mobile/WinCE is in fact, an utterly appalling OS. There is no part of the steaming pile of shite, from the drivers to the GUI that are fit for anything,
let alone purpose, and "locked downfullness" is just more piss on the shit.
The hardware may have been OK, it was impossible to know, because whenever to tried to use it, software
usability issues and bugs prevented you. Particularly annoying was the fact that you were frequently required to restart
or reinstall, and this usually deleted all settings and data you had entered - using the device was so painful, you
ended up just leaving it in a draw and cursing.
Of course Symbian came up with "signed for Symbian" which guaranteed apps you bought would expire shortly after you paid for them,
and no realistic way to have FOSS apps on it, ensuring it died a death.
Gates is not the only cretin in high places.
And, yes, I could gladly spend an evening jumping up and down on Google.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:40PM (1 child)
They only have had 2 monopolies. Windows and Office (which they got illegally using Windows.)
The phone was an accessory; at best it was a THREAT to their desktop monopoly product. They NEVER EVER would have undermined their Desktop OS so any other product could not risk it!
Ironically, their strength and intentionally strategy was to make Windows/MS software the path of least resistance - and their silly portable Windows OS attempts suffered from that which they wielded illegally against their competition. Their quality was almost always D or C level so the motivation was never there. They only could have made it on the phone market if they made their Desktop APIs capable of working on a tiny mobile device with no effort then making the phone a windows PC; without a decent monitor or keyboard/mouse. Luckily, they lacked the technology to put a windows PC on a phone at the time.... and most probably lacked the engineering skill to morph their APIs to handle that. Notice that they've somewhat gone down this path now; 20 years later -- but only for tablets.
BTW, the tablet computer concept was thought up by Apple and published in the 80s. Google "knowledge navigator".
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday June 25 2019, @07:02PM
Alternatively:
The tablet computer concept was thought up by Douglas Adams and published in 1979. Google "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
(Bonus obligatory xkcd link [xkcd.com])
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Tuesday June 25 2019, @11:44AM
Looking back at the success of all those billion dollar companies of today, I must conclude that they all got their users hooked on their product first. Just like with drugs. It's the only reason why they grew so big. Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google and all the rest.
That's why Microsoft lost the mobile market and why Nokia and Blackberry can't come back, because people are already hooked on existing players.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @12:35PM (1 child)
There is a nice video of Ballmer commenting on this new thing Apple made "The iPhone", laughing about it not even having a keyboard and it not appealing to business people. He is not worried because they have great products coming like their own phone and the Zune...
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:30PM
I'm still laughing. And today people are breaking down doors with wads of cash in hand just to get badly yellowed banged up IBM Model M, Leading Edge blue Alps slider, and Zeos/NTC/Generic White Alps slider keyboards.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Entropy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:39PM
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.
(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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:17PM (9 children)
The inability of Microsoft leadership to recognize both the rise of the internet, and the potential of smart phones and tablets is because they were too focused on their profitable desktop monopoly.
This happens to big businesses.
These toy microcomputers are never going to represent a threat to the powerful IBM corporation and its mainframes!
IBM will sell about two million PCs, wipe out Apple, TRS-80, etc; and then the microcomputer 'fad' will be over and back to business as usual.
Another reason a successful company can fail to recognize a paradigm shift is because doing so, and acting on it, building products, would cannibalize their existing super profitable business. So they don't. They don't want a drop in profits just to 'dabble' in some new market that doesn't itself make a profit. So the new upstart competitor comes along and eats up their profitable business for them.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:26PM (3 children)
Err, MS had been working on "tablets" since the 90s at least.
MS introduced the UMPC at least a year before Apple unveiled their iPhone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-mobile_PC [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:53PM (2 children)
Microsoft's vision of a Tablet was that it would run Desktop Windows. Modified to try to work in a tablet form factor. And it wasn't a bad attempt. If there had been no iPad to compare to, it might have succeeded.
The point is that Microsoft's focus was Windows everywhere. Rather than the Steve Jobs approach of start with the product and end user and then work back to the engineering. Microsoft would (and many would) naturally start with what do we have to work with, and how do we best adapt it to the new requirement.
Microsoft saw a Windows centric world. Probably also seeing the tablet as an auxiliary device to the desktop, since a Windows Tablet is not as easy to use as a desktop (or an iPad). You might not spend as much time web surfing on a Windows Tablet as you would on the Desktop PC or on an iPad.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
Personally, I'd much rather use a Surface, which is a real computer, than an iPad, which is a glorified phone but without the phone. And I'm not the only one - Surface sales are growing 21% [techradar.com] per year, while iPad sales are, well, not (although they have recovered somewhat from the huge declines of a couple of years ago).
Ironically, the situation with the Surface and the iPad is almost the reverse of the iPhone and Windows Mobile. The Surface runs real software that is actually useful, and the iPad runs crippled imitation software that is basically just a novelty gimmick. In Microsoft's language, the Surface is long-term credible. The iPad's niche seems to be in kiosks, point of sale, and the like, where its limitations matter less, and among people who just have to buy things that have fruit drawn on them.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:38PM
The Surface and the Windows Tablet experiments of the mid 2000s are light years apart.
Personally, I like a nice Pixelbook. Because Linux. I don't do Windows. (except at work) But I had to jump through a few hoops to get what I consider a good Chrome OS, Android, Linux desktop mixture setup. So even when using an Android app, or a Linux desktop, the Chrome OS is always listening for me to say "hey google, what's the weather?"
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:27PM (1 child)
because doing so, and acting on it, building products, would cannibalize their existing super profitable business.
No - its because people at the top recognise their power base is threatened and put themselves before the company.
Its not "stupid" its "greed" (but, as we know MBA's believe "greed is good" so its OK).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:35PM
Greed, not tempered with sufficient planning can be very stupid. (*cough* Boeing 737 Max *cough*)
MBAs or especially executives are not known for long term planning and thinking beyond one quarter.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @07:33PM (2 children)
MS is known for screwing up startups to prevent new markets that develop to possibly threaten its existing cashcow business. Basically, they act like typical monopoly.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:42PM (1 child)
The history of the 80's, 90's and some of the 2000s is littered with the startup corpses left in the wake of Microsoft.
Since we're talking phones, I'll mention Sendo [wikipedia.org]. Microsoft started trying to put them out of business before the ink on the agreement was even dry, in order to steal their IP. It is a very low cost way to "acquire" IP rather than outright buying it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday June 26 2019, @03:36AM
Since we're talking phones, I'll mention Sendo.
The Wikipedia article on Sendo really understates the malice that was observed at the time by M$ against Sendo. The trade press was all over M$ for apparently having gone into negotiations purely for the purpose of stealling trade secrets. M$ had no intention of signing any kind of contract with Sendo and met with them purely to pillage. It was that which put Sendo out of business not the other way around.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.