Daily Archive for May 2nd, 2007

Sometimes Steve Ballmer Just Takes Your Breath Away

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 2-May-2007
in Apple, Innovation and Microsoft
. Comments

InformationWeek Blog | Sometimes Steve Ballmer Just Takes Your Breath Away

Very insightful article which helps blow past the Ballmer spin machine. Of course, Ballmer has such an “historic” perspective on Microsoft’s success.

In a USA Today interview Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is asked if he wishes consumers would get as passionate about Microsoft as they do when Apple comes out with something new. “It’s sort of a funny question,” he answers. “Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? I want to have products that appeal to everybody.” Steve, I’ve got one word for you: iPod.Ballmer wants to see the “my-OS-on-everybody’s-hardware” model play in the mobile phone space the way it has in the desktop-computer space. I am afraid, however, that’s not a forward-looking idea, it’s backward-looking wishful thinking.

Of course what was interesting to me was the low market share numbers for Windows Mobile devices, 5.6%. I must admit, for the past 6 months or so, I have been a Windows Mobile users–although not a happy one.

At the same time, while desktop PCs aren’t exactly going away, they’re being pushed to one side in the marketplace by other devices, and Ballmer can only dream about 96% of the market for cell phone operating systems. On the small percentage of phones that are smartphones — that is, they run applications — Microsoft’s Windows Mobile runs a distant third behind Symbian and Linux world-wide, according to figures on Wikipedia. (The breakdown is given as Symbian OS 72.8%, Linux 16.7%, Windows Mobile 5.6%, RIM 2.8%, and Palm OS 1.8%.)

If the enterprise market is at all on the iPhone’s radar screen, the key to breaking the Microsoft habit is to break the dependency on the Exchange/Outlook duopoly. There are a lot of enterprise buyers out there drooling over the iPhone and they have access to the corporate purchasing card, but they won’t buy the iPhone if they can’t get the corporate email. Since you can’t get Exchange out overnight, Apple, meet Blackberry/Blackberry meet Apple.

Furthermore, products like SharePoint should be seen for the evil they really are–and banished from all companies. It remains to be seen if products like Scalix, the Google office suite, or my personal favorite, Zimbra can gain market share in the collaborative software space. Only by breaking the Exchange/Outlook stranglehold on the enterprise, will Apple have a shot at piercing the enterprise market.

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Ballmer Says iPhone Won’t Succeed. Has Windows Mobile?

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 2-May-2007
in Apple and Microsoft
. Comments

InformationWeek Blog | Ballmer Says iPhone Won’t Succeed. Has Windows Mobile?

Steve Ballmer seems to be full of bluster these days. In his latest potshot at the iPhone, the Microsoft CEO says, “the future of the mobile handset business will primarily depend on software influence rather than hardware.” In other words, Apple’s hardware approach to sales won’t work and Microsoft’s software approach is better. Let’s take a real look at the success of Windows Mobile’s software-drive success, shall we?

Fellow bloggers Stephen Wellman and David DeJean quoted a passage from Ballmer yesterday in which he says he’d rather have Microsoft software on 60% or 70% of the phones in the world than meet the hardware sales goals of Apple’s iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the iPhone’s launch that he would like to see the iPhone represent 1% of all mobile phone sales by the end of 2008. That’s 10 million devices. So he’s giving Apple 18 months (assuming a June launch) to reach that goal. I won’t say that it isn’t an ambitious goal. Given Apple’s success at selling iPods, I will reserve judgment for now on the iPhone’s real potential.

With the smartphone market approximating 10% of all mobile phone sales, it amounts to roughly 100 million devices sold per year. Of those 100 million, Windows Mobile appears on 5.6%, or 5.6 million of them. So, in the 5 years that Windows Mobile has been around, it has barely cracked 0.6% of all mobile phone sales. Ballmer has a long, long way to go to reach his target of 60%.

In light of Windows Mobile’s success, or lack thereof depending on your point of view, I’d say Ballmer doesn’t have all that much to crow about. In fact, if Apple does meet its hardware sales goals by 2008, which would best the number of Windows Mobile-powered devices by about 4 million, Ballmer will be forced to eat crow.

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