Microsoft's Steve Ballmer dismisses Apple as a 'low-volume player' - Page 4

People aren't just handing them billions of dollars. There actually was a time that people lined up for a Windows release.

No, not really.

Windows users are not as hyped as Mac users. Every Windows is for a slow start, but picks up later on... well, every successful one. OSX spikes fast, but then declines as limited user base gets saturated.

According to Balmer, Windows 8 initial demand actually outpaces Windows 7 demand at the same time of it's release, and by a margin.

 

It's weird when people draw these kinds of comparisons. Ferrari and Bentley are not mass market products. They're priced well out of the range of most people. A lot of people who own Ferraris don't even drive them as their "regular" cars. They draw a lot of weird attention. An iphone is not the same thing. No one will be surprised to see one in public, as it's a fairly common product, especially in larger cities. This is actually a better thing for Apple. Having a product that moves that many units has shown them much more growth than they would have seen from a device with the sales volume of a Ferrari.

 

 

 

He really does spout a lot of nonsense. Microsoft could use a better face for their company.

Edited by hmm - 10/30/12 at 5:14pm

Ballmer sucks nuts.

[/quote]He really does spout a lot of nonsense. Microsoft could use a better face for their company.
[/quote]

Figuratively and literally.

To be fair, Apple did drop the price pretty quickly. I don't think it would have sold well at its original price. But I do think Microsoft's strategy is distasteful. They flaunt their monopoly of being bundled with every PC to dismiss any potential competition. Steve saw this years ago and declared that Microsoft won. Microsoft missed the other thing he said though that the only way they'd be unseated is with new technology and their iOS devices have done just that.

Steve: it's over, Microsoft won.
Ballmer: Hey Bill, Steve said we won.
Bill: Cool, we'll always be number 1.
Steve: We think PCs are going to be used a lot less in favour of Post-PC devices.
Ballmer: Well, we think they're still called PCs.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229913/Apple_breezes_to_PC_sales_top_spot_as_Windows_share_decays

Ballmer: Oh sh*t, Bill they're saying Apple's selling more PCs than anyone else when they count tablets, which we're still calling PCs.
Bill: Dammit, we should have called them post-PC. No matter how half-assed it is, you need to fix this quick.
Ballmer: Introducing Microsoft Surface. Check it out, clicky magnetic keyboard. Ignore the tablet itself don't even turn it on, just keep clicking the cover - we can't compete on quality or innovation so our USP is clicky noises:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2vasc8UNl_0#t=28s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7UlE-o8DQQ

Originally Posted by Marvin To be fair, Apple did drop the price pretty quickly. I don't think it would have sold well at its original price. It sold so well (and the 4GB so poorly) at that price that they discontinued the cheaper one, the 4GB! I like owning the Apple product with the shortest lifespan. 😎 And yes, I just copied and pasted this old text into the new box. 

Edited by Tallest Skil - 10/30/12 at 7:00pm

Steve Ballmer appears to be delusional (iPhone funeral etc.), arrogant (everything out of his mouth) and shows signs of hyper-vigilant narcissism. He’s not capable of leading Microsoft—this has been obvious for many years—yet he’s still there and his personal wealth is now estimated to be ~$15.7 billion. Isn’t that profoundly disturbing?

 

Not true.  They lost the console war to Nintendo, and it cost them billions to get to where they are (second place) in the console business (upwards of $30 billion).

 

At the rate they're (finally) making money off the console business, it'll take them years just to recoup their investment.  And that assumes they don't chuck another $10 - $20 billion into their next generation console (which they might have to do to compete with Sony and Nintendo, again).

 

The console business became just the kind of no-margin, high-volume sinkhole Apple avoids like the plague.

Ballmer is using the number of desktop/laptop users compared to the number of Apple users using OS X as a low volume player.

A little message to Ballmer, Apple may be a smaller volume in the desktop/laptop arena as far as install base, but Apple is gaining market share and in the tablet world, Apple is cleaning Microsoft's clock and in the smartphne arena, Microsoft is non-existent.

Now, in terms of the financial viability, Microsoft is turning into a half of the value of Apple.

Microsoft's profit margins are erroding as Microsoft dives into the mobile device market since they don't charge as much for the licensing, hardware is lower margin than they are normally used to and because Microsoft is threatened by Apple's success  as a tablet and smartphone maker.  Microsoft is not the big player in those aspects.

 

Ballmer has to act like he isn't scared and Ballmer is just trying to use FUD marketing, but it coming off as as in idiot.  

 

I actually will be laughing the day he gets ousted out of Microsoft. I wonder who would or should i say IS going to take his place.

Low Volume player?

 

When Apple announces the first Week sales for the Mini, is Ballmer going to announce Surface sales for comparison?

 

Fixed that for you.

I am sure Steve Jobs is laughing at this. You think so huh. Really. Maybe he's not dead and everyone is supposed to think he is.

If Apple is a "low-volume player" in smartphones, them Microsoft must not even be in the game.

Windows 8 is laughable. What a piece of junk!

I'm amazed every time this guy opens his mouth. Can someone please give him a banana? Yes, Apple has smaller volumes but I bet Microsoft looks small in Apples rear mirror too. Ballmer was taken by surprise by the Ipod, Iphone and the Ipad, He had no clue and no foresight. Fortunately Ballmer only comes in one copy.

Edited by Meniac - 10/31/12 at 6:28am

I love this man, he's a professional troll!

It's clear Bomber's math skills have gotten as bad as his technology skills.... both have almost ground to a halt driven by dementia.

Only thing Windoze 8 is going to accomplish is create more Apple customers.

 

Except support for software tends to fall off after a few versions of OSX, where people on XP can run probably 98% of the programs on Windows 7/8. The culture of users with both companies are different. Users on Windows get to be more choosey with their upgrade patterns because Microsoft provides a very long period of support. On OSX it's not so much the case, and users are quicker to adopt the new OS.

 

Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS. Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation or it may become like MS, thinking they are too big to fail. I love my Macs and iPads, but they could become stagnate, thinking nobody does anything good and they will always be able to charge whatever because its Apple.

Apple has never really tried going after the large enterprise market. I am curious what the percentage shares would be if you only included home users. Over the last couple of years especially, I would bet Apple's share is growing big time.

I don't see it happening with Windows 8 unless they quickly fix its glaring UI quirks. I tried to give it a fair shake, but it's a gimped OS for the desktop, and it absolutely needs a touch screen for the UI to make sense.

Previous versions of Windows stagnated and Apple still improved their product over the past decade.

 

They haven't. Windows 8 is an absolutely miserable experience. As just one example, not even of the UI (because I could hit our post character limit talking about how bad the UI—both old and new—is), Windows refuses to acknowledge the existence of the WDDM 1.1 driver.

 

Just… doesn't accept it. So every time I boot into Windows, my resolution is 640x420. And this is being displayed on my 27" Cinema Display.

The Windows 8 install disc even understands how to make the resolution 1024x768 during the install, but as soon as it's done and booted onto the partition, boom. Unusably small (well, so is 1024x768). 

 

So you do the 20 step process of letting the OS find new drivers on the Internet. Screen goes to black, boom, comes up 2560x1440 and works fine for the rest of the time you're in Windows. Driver reports itself as WDDM 1.1, like it should (since ATI has dropped support for the 4000 series in Windows 8).

 

Then you reboot and it's 640x420 again. It refuses to understand how to keep its own drivers up. 

 

"Just use the driver in the Boot Camp 4 set."

 

It does the same thing.

 

They don't. They've never really had a competitor before and they have always innovated, so I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is the case.

 

This remains one of the most terrifying images on the Internet.

Edited by Tallest Skil - 10/31/12 at 1:56pm

What's hilarious is that Ballmer thinks of Surface as a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING platform and IOS tablets as a toy. Well, the interface for WIndows 8, all variants is basically the XBOX interface.  Yeah Ballmet, a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING PLATFORM.

 

X-BOX.  I guess Microsoft has to get their future computer users trained on X-Boxes first.  

I dismiss Ballmer as being a low-brain-cell-player with a coinciding hair folical issue.

I was using the the windows 8 beta also on my iMac, instead of using bootcamp used Virtualbox. It worked... but It was not intuitive, innovative, nor cohesive. I thought that it was just me. Perhaps people using 7 and vista will think it's great and buy it. I don't mind XP at all and now days it runs great in Virtualbox. We switched all of our PC's to Macs and just use VB for our Windows apps.

Even with their low down rotten past I would really hate for MS to go away because I think Google is much worse and insidious. MS was at least forthcoming about their intent to harm companies by taking marketshare. Google steals from the inside and doesn't care who gets in the way. MS would be a good buffer between Google and Apple.

Surface = low-volume netbook.

Some other Low Volume Products; Dom Perignon, Rolex, Ferrari