Quote:
Originally Posted by Sage
I dislike Steve Ballmer. He's not a good figure head for Microsoft and spouts nonsense on a regular basis. It's best to ignore him.
Asked about the iPhone, he replied:
"A: It's sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody.
Now we'll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
Steve - Windows Mobile, even by Microsoft's own projections for 2008, is expected to have less than a 2% share of the market. This is after 7+ years of continuous investment and development. Why are you ridiculing Apple for achieving the same in just one year?
Hopefully J Allard will get promoted to CEO eventually and Ballmer will retire to a nice island somewhere out of the way.  |
I see no way that Apple gets that 2% or 3% marketshare in a year. Not going to be close either. MS projects to sell 20 million licensed devices in the fiscal year starting July 1st. They've experienced 100% growth every year for 4 years now.
I personally think the iPhone goal of 10 million devices is insane and will not be reached. The recent Markitecture poll of US cellphone owners said that 6% intend to buy one. The problem is no data is given on what provider these people are with. I find it hard to believe that of Cingular's 60 million customers, a full 17% are going to be using the top of the line phone.
The Razr, it has been said, achieved 2%-3% market saturation at its height. And this is a phone that was available on many carriers. It really took off when the price came down. (ahem) Some people may switch carriers to get the iPhone but there are MANY factors that go into a decision like that. I'm on TMo because my family is and many of my friends are. I wouldn't want to switch.