Bill Gates Says Windows Phone Strategy Was Inadequate 268
puddingebola writes "Perhaps it isn't newsworthy, but Bill Gates has characterized Microsoft's mobile and smartphone strategies as 'a mistake.' From the article: 'In an interview with CBS This Morning's Charlie Rose on Monday, Gates admitted he wasn't pleased with Microsoft's performance in the mobile market, going as far as to characterize the company's smartphone strategy as "a mistake." "We didn't miss cell phones," Gates said. "But the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership, so it's clearly a mistake."'"
Re:big (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone with a WinMo phone will tell you one of the biggest problems with them is the difficulty in finding apps that actually work.
I developed apps for Windows Mobile, and I can tell you that the biggest problem was getting a phone/OS that would actually work.
They were uniformly terrible, unreliable as phones and inconsistent and hard to understand as PDAs. You couldn't even rely on them as alarm clocks, given their propensity to hang and/or crash.
Re:Uh huh... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a miracle the Kinect made it out the doors, and even then, they let a surprise HW hit collect dust.
The kinect (hardware, the device itself) did not really come from Microsoft's R&D.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect [wikipedia.org]
Kinect builds on software technology developed internally by Rare, a subsidiary of Microsoft Game Studios owned by Microsoft, and on range camera technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which developed a system that can interpret specific gestures, making completely hands-free control of electronic devices possible by using an infrared projector and camera and a special microchip to track the movement of objects and individuals in three dimension.
Re:Like... (Score:1, Informative)
Firstly, you and he grandparent are simply lying. Bill neither mentioned Windows Mobile nor Windows Phone. He was talking about Microsoft's strategy in general. That would include both; otherwise he would say something like "I wasn't satisfied with Microsoft's mobile strategy but now Steve has fixed it and we have a good chance in future". Notice how, despite the total sales disaster, he's still pretending that Surface was a success. Any admission of failure that he makes leads to the immediate question "what are you doing to make sure they fix this".
Secondly; this is not some innocent babe talking here. Before the chairman of Microsoft talks on any subject related to the company he will have been briefed and considered everything with both public relations advisers and lawyers. He didn't say this as an accidental candid gesture. He said this as a specific warning to a bunch of existing parters. No doubt Nokia and AT&T have been repeatedly warned in private that they aren't delivering what Microsoft wants. This is a very clear attempt to get the message out "Microsoft's strategy is failing; we are going to have to change it; partners we consider are in the way had better get out of the way". In other words; some time soon Nokia at least; AT&T probably are going to get fucked. If there was any different message then when the Register called them (which they always do) or immediately after the story was published there would have been a retraction or clarification. The Register's story is exactly the message Microsoft wants put out. The reason is to explain why they are about to screw over their partners yet again.