Robert Levy
10-13-2003, 10:50 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059480552599' target='_blank'>http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059480552599</a><br /><br /></div>Chris Nuttall, IT correspondent at the Financial Times interviewed Bill Gates about the Vodafone announcement and Microsoft's general role in the industry. What I find most interesting in this interview is Bill's acceptance of Nokia. Given the rarity of hearing him talking about being the underdog in an industry, it is refreshing to see him take pride in the fact that the competition in this market leads to faster and faster innovation that all mobile operators and consumers will benefit from.<br /><br />"We started our phone related investments four years ago and then we shipped a year ago and now I think it's fair to say we're a mainstream provider. A year from now we'll be a mainstream provider as our market share really starts to tick up through the Motorola, Samsung and other people who are providing those handsets. Its clear as day that that's going to happen. People are going to want a cool Nokia handset and a cool MS handset and we'll get virtually all of the operators to have both of those offered. You'll have a few that might just go with us, a few that i ght just go with Nokia - but overwhelmingly they like the excitement of that kind of constant improvement."<br /><br />It's a great interview so check out the link above and give it a read.