Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says that Microsoft missed out on a $400B market by letting Google turn Android into the only real alternative to the iPhone.
Gates confessed that his mismanagement of Microsoft’s mobile efforts was his ‘greatest mistake’ …
The Verge reports on remarks made by the Microsoft co-founder during an interview at venture capital company Village Global. Gates said only one company could take on Apple, and it should have been Microsoft.
Although Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, and it’s successor Steve Ballmer’s laughter at the iPhone we all remember, the co-founder remained chairman and chief software architect, and would almost certainly have been involved in the strategy for switching from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone.
Gates himself switched to an Android phone back in 2017.
It seems hard to imagine in 2019, but in the pre-iPhone days when Google bought Android, the search giant was actually worried that Microsoft would come to dominate the mobile market the way it had the desktop one.
Gates said that, without his mistake, Microsoft would today be the biggest company in the world.
Gates’ admission is somewhat surprising, though. Many had assumed that Microsoft’s missed mobile opportunity was a Steve Ballmer era mistake. Ballmer famously laughed at the iPhone, calling it the “most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard.” While Ballmer accepted the iPhone could go on to sell well, he crucially missed the touch-friendly era it was ushering in, and laughed off its lack of a keyboard.
This was a key part of Microsoft’s early mobile mistakes, and it came from the very top.
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