Microsoft CEO pans Apple's Mac sales, admits 'very small' Windows Phone sales - Page 3

Exact quote, verbatim, of the many other spam quotes for cheap website con-jobs.

Somewhere between hardly any and none at all I should imagine.

Great, just ignore the iPad, your #1 threat, when comparing units sold. Steve Jobs just laughs when they do that.

Apple surpassing 20 million Macs per year is a huge improvement. It's more than double what they were selling just a couple years prior.

The acceleration is behind OS X, not Windows.

the big question is will WP 7 ever grow into a major OS.

MS is betting the Nokia partnership/take over will accomplish that. but it is also possible it will flop, and be the end of Nokia instead. i don't see the very idiosyncratic WP 7 replacing the much more generic Symbian phones worldwide. maybe in Europe at best, a niche.

actually, MS' best hope is that the massive ongoing legal attack on Android brings it down in a year or two, and forces OEM's to look for alternative OS's. of course, HP may license out WebOS too in that case. and RIM, if they ever pull QNX together ... and assuming they survive long enough.

the only thing you can be sure of is a very solid Apple iOS presence in the market. the iPhone will always be a solid top quality product in an otherwise very fragmented market. all the other OS' and OEM's will be constantly scrambling to eke profits as the situation twists and turns constantly.

Given that Apple's market cap is about 50% higher than Microsoft's, apparently most shareholders don't find them important enough to compensate for Microsoft's other weaknesses.

350 is bigger than 20 indeed. How's the market valuation, Monkey Boy?

Nokia still have great market presence outside the US and there is still a huge population of handset owners who've never owned a smartphone. A big percentage of them use Nokia dumb-phones, so the market share is there for Nokia to lose - which admittedly I fully expect them to do. But if they manage to deliver they could end up being a significant 3rd player everywhere but the US.

Nokia still have some good engineers, they still have some good designers, they still have great relationships with carriers around the world, they still have global manufacturing reach. They've always lacked software, and while we can mock WP7 it looks nicer than anything they ever made for themselves.

Is it just me or does Ballmer have the scarier eyes?

I suppose your hair-splitting is correct. Technically if MS loses a sale, it's not necessarily to a mac. However, as far as the vast majority of human beings on the planet is concerned, the only "non-Mac PC" is Windows. Linux does not count. Ever.

Oh sure, he has vision. He dismissed the iPhone in 2007, comparing it to Microsoft's mighty fistful of hardware partners and millions in Windows Mobile licenses... Convincing Palm to offer a Windows-based Treo was a feather in their cap. His vision was to stay the Windows Mobile course...

Right on.

Ballmer should look at partnering with Apple and have a Windows operating system installed on every Mac, as well as MS Office. Think about making a profit with apple instead of bad mouthing the company. At least hold on to the office monopoly.

Funny how Ballmer is now gearing the comparisons to something other than mobile, where he's getting bikini waxed by Apple.

He might as well also state that Microsoft is killing Apple in the extended keyboard market.

I'd really like to see these maps!

It's one thing for Ballmer to talk about installations of Windows vs. installations of Mac OS, but he should not be bragging about sales of Windows PCs, because Microsoft doesn't market any PCs. And Apple doesn't market the OS outside of their own computers. So it's two completely different approaches to the market.

Furthermore, I believe you have to look at either company as a whole. If you include the iOS, which is after all, an offshoot of the MacOS, how close does Apple get now?

But even that's not the issue. The issue is which company is most positioned to be able to deal with the future? In spite of their past successes, does anyone think of Microsoft as a visionary company? What was the last groundbreaking product from Microsoft....the menu bar in the latest versions of Office?

McDonald's sells far more burgers than your high-end, locally-sourced, grass-fed, organic burger restaurant, but which would most people rather be associated with?

But I do think there are legitmate questions as to whether Apple can remain a visionary company at the same time that it appeals to the masses. Generally, if the masses want something, I don't.

Apple would never partner with Microsoft on licensing Windows on every Mac. You do get that they compete at the OS level, right?

Nokia once owned the phone market in the US Mobile space. With Apple moving heavily into China and being huge in the US, they have the two largest GDP markets in the world, followed by Japan.

Nokia is drowning and Microsoft's life boat has a hole in it.

yes, but one of the neat things is using windows on a mac machine, especially if you're trying to get the corporate types to buy a mac, hey, it has windows preloaded. and I can do my work on the mac osx. everybody wins and i get to use a mac at work.

yup. but WP 7's tiles UI is too hip. very first world. i don't see it replacing Nokia's dumb phones globally. the local telcos will opt for something they can tailor more easily to their markets. Samsung and the rest will provide more generic OS options for them that they can localize.

... and, of course, M$ would have a courtroom battle over licensing terms at some point to try shut Apple out and have only Windows on Mac machines...

[In the address, Ballmer highlighted sales of 350 million Windows-based PCs in the last year, and used the number to criticize Apple without referring to the company by name.

"We've got a lot of competition in the Windows business," Ballmer said. "But we're driving hard with just in the last year alone 350 million -- 350 million -- new PCs sold. That might compare with numbers from other guys that are in the 20 million range. Now, 20 is too much, but 350, last time I checked, is a lot more than 20."}

When is Bawlbaby Ballmer going to realise that MajorCrap does NOT make hardware? It's time to separate the Windreck OS from the hardware. Apple makes the hardware and software. MajorCrap only makes softeare.

And yes there a number of companies that make PCs, and yes the sales of the PC hardware might be higher than a sole company that makes an integrated software/hardware product, but MajorCrap makes no computer hardware. So Bawlbaby can toute all the "I'm a PC" and "Make my home a PC store" commercials he wants. But he ought to really stop taking credit for the hardware.

Like they say, it maybe "Life Without Walls" but it's still a pane (pain).

Some of you guys are really going off of the deep end.

First off, to call all Windows PCs bargain, or low-cost, PCs is ludicrous.

Windows itself is far more expensive than OSX. A retail copy of Windows 7 Home is $230. Mac OSX is a fraction of that cost. However, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, because users of OSX (presumably) have already purchased Apple hardware.

I guess what I am getting at is that some of you don't seem to realize how significant and cutting edge Microsoft is. Anyone would concede that Apple is wins on a retail-customer products, and that Apple is brutalizing MS in the mobile phone segment. But MS literally dominates the market for servers, and other enterprise applications. The XBOX has been an overwhelming success (not financially, but in terms of brand recognition).

Moreover, while average PC is certainly cheaper than the average Mac, they share 99% of the same components (with the exception of the casing and Operating System). There is a reason why boutique computer builders only build Windows computers. There is a reason why my $3,000 desktop setup that I built myself runs Windows.

But I digress. It is plainly clear that Apple beats MS in profitability and in growth in the consumer market. That does not make MS a "low-end" company, nor does it mean that MS has failed to grow.

As an aside, I own both an 11" macbook air and a 13" MBP. I have Windows 7 on both. I cannot remember that last time I even bothered with OSX. I readily admit that OSX is the most user-friendly OS on the planet, but I am far more effective on W7.

[Ballmer's only mention of any apple in his keynote came in reference to the fruit, when he made a joke about the next version of Windows Phone, codenamed "mango."]


A few decades ago, Cleveland (Ohio) apparently ran a me-too campaign. Jumping on the successful "New York: The Big Apple", Cleveland billed itself as "A Plumb". That is until someone pointed out that dried out plumbs become prunes, and we all know what they are useful for. Needless to say, that marketing campaign seemed as ill-conceived and short lived as most of MajorCrap's campaigns and products. Not all fruit ages or travels well, Ballmer.

Then again, it is amusing to watch Bawlbaby bounce up and down like a preschooler last in line for a potty break...

Nokia never owned the US the way it owned the rest of the world - partly because the US was a morasss of competing wireless standards, partly because the carriers preferred to sell handsets under their own brands.

I don't think Nokia ever even cracked 10% in the US.



Probably true, I'm just saying that they're not dead yet.

Nokia is still big in the EU, and it's very strong in South America, which aspires to a first world status and products, though it's mostly a long ways off. 50% of people in the EU are probably still using dumbphones, and 50% of them are probably using Nokia dumbphones. Thats a lot of potential WP7 customers.

Hate to correct you, but unless you have some stats to prove your statement, it has been reported that the pc market declined by 4% in the March 11 quarter.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart...AI_COTD_052711

It will be interesting to see what the June quarter for PC growth/retreat will be.

Well, you forgot to include Smart Phones, Tablets, MP3 players, Media Centers, Songs, Movies, Apps and actual computers.

Microsoft does sell more OS licenses to OEM compared to Apple which it doesn't bother with and they sell a lot of Xboxes at a loss, to sell games and online memberships.

More like Done and Doing!!

That's more or less what he said with the iPhone was first announced!

At least one less, because many of those people will never go back to Windows.

Oh boy! A Ballmer bashing thread! Yippee!

1) Hey, Steve B. Apple's computers are Windows computers, too. MS sells an operating system that Macs can run - and many do because they need both Mac OS X and Windows.

2) MS sells Office for Mac OS and Windows. It's a very popular product on both platforms.

On the PC side, Apple is as much a target platform as a competitor. How about focusing on the former?

3) In the cell phone market, yeah, MS has an uphill climb. Better get on that.

- Jasen.

When Bill Gates turned his back on Microsoft to devote his life's work to charity, his most charitable act was leaving the company in the hands of his mentally handicapped college roommate, Steve Bummer.

You forgot to add in the additional expense of all the virus software and subscriptions required to run Windoze.

You also seem to mistake cost for value.



Maybe because, M$ isn't significant and cutting edge?



Probably because you weren't clever enough to install a real OS, like BSD or Linux.



Being set in your ways and unable to become proficient with a more sophisticated and modern tool is nothing to brag about.

Apple used to excel at both, but they've taken a step back on the software front, at least with computer software. the Final Cut X disaster, the new iMovie, QuickTime X (ugly interface and so limited that they still offer QT7), Mobile Me, even iTunes (the artwork for music in a list is now very small and ugly) - big mistakes with all of them.

Computer software is the one area that Apple is not excelling in - maybe the Final Cut fiasco will lead Apple to put better software designers in the computer division instead of sending them to iOS.

my point is the UI is wrong for that. the general reaction in the USA is that WP 7 is "cool." well that's nice. but "cool" does not translate across cultures well. Nokia went to great lengths working with local telcos around the world to localize its products, inlcuding their top level of Symbian UI. that is one big reason why it had so many different models and strong global sales. i can't see WP 7 being as easy to localize, even if Nokia can keep its experienced global marketing team in place. and will MS give it the flexibility it would need to cut deals that give those local telcos' in house servies priority over MS services (assuming they can be reformatted into tiles)? i don't think so.

so yeah, that leaves the EU. Nokia's last stand.

I think iOS kinda proved that was wrong. That was certainly the old view, that interface needed to be localized and customized. I very much doubt that Nokia will go down that route again. At any rate the modern clean tile look of WP7 should work perfectly well across a lot of markets.

I do not agree with that statement unless you are referring specifically to the corporate market and even that might be open for debate in the future.

Apple has completely dominated MS in the high-end and now in the low end it is coming after them with the iPad. Along with their ecosystem Apple represents a serious threat to business as usual at MS.

Balmer is much more than raging chunk-o-chub - he is the standards bearer of MS that will milk their market position and patents for years to come. Will their dominance continue to erode? YES indeed there is nothing they can do now to markedly shift the momentum in the market place. MS stands for Milking the Status woe. With some valiant attempts at creating inspired products.

As usual, I have nothing relevant to add to this conversation.