The article you cite has Balmer saying that of the 1.3 billion phones Apple might get 2% or 3%, but he would rather have his software in 60%-80%. So actually he is correct, Apple itself is shooting for 1% of total mobile phone marketshare.
iPhone is hardware and Windows Mobile is software. Windows Mobile's competitors are really Symbian and Linux.
I would be skeptical of iSuppli survey. July was the month when iPhone was introduced. Obviously sales have slowed and for some reason Apple has not announce 1 million units sold yet. iSuppli guesses 4.5 million this year. Apple gave some guidance numbers last month which I think is way below that.
It is rumored that Google is working on a phone. Think it will use Linux. Will it steal some of iPhone's thunder?
As usual beanie, you are so wrong. Apple gave the stats on less than two days of sales, certainly not the entire month. Why don't you stop trying to refute Apple's success? You are not as smart as you think you are.
I have to confess that in the original article Ballmer was probably referring to his marketshare in OS. I think - especially in the TV interview - that he was saying he'd rather have 80% of the market share than 3%. He was wrong is so many ways - but here are two. Firstly as an 80% market share you cannot GROW. There is very little room for your company to expand. Secondly when it comes to the iPhone it really isn't about the feature set. It is easy to come up with a feature set and say x is better than the iPhone because it does y. That is NOT the point. The reason why the market is reacting so well to the iPhone is that the iPhone does it all so easily. And geeks and apologists won't get this. The iPhone success has nothing to do with features. It has everything to do with ease of use.
Well, the biggest problem is that MS does NOT have 60 to 80% of the smartphone OS market. Symbian has the lions share. Windows variants have something like 5% total. So, if OS X has taken 1.8%, then they have quickly gotten to around 40% of what Windows does, which is remarkable and should embarass Ballmer.
Hi Dr. Bill?
Balmer said that he would PREFER to have his software on 60%-80% of the 1.3 billion phones as oppose to 2%-3% which Apple might get selling hardware. That is future speak. There were no claims to how much marketshare Windows Mobile currently has for smartphones or overall market.
My bad. It least, you figured out who I am. I guess you are a smart guy after all. However, Ballmer said much more than that quote, including "who would buy a phone that costs $500" and other things as well, so quoting one part of his inaccurate assessment is just plain old wrong. He ridiculed iPhone's potential and more [I listened to the feed a few times]. He's is definitely eating his words. I will talk to at the other site dude. You know I love ya man.
Bill [Doc]
"iPhone sales prove Steve Ballmer wrong"
That was always going to happen. Ballmer was clearly shaken by the iPhone - he looked rattled in that famous video clip where he does that braying thing - and all he could think to do was to try to FUD it. Much good it did him.
MS is good at things like bribing members of standards committees; it is ridiculously poor at designing products anyone would actually want to use if they were aware of alternatives and not locked-in. They've got the lock on the desktop via the OEMs and the "Windows tax"; but in the mobile space they are also-rans. There they must compete on merit, and that they cannot do.
I love my Mac, but I actually thought that the price of the iPhone was too high, but when you factor in the less expensive ATT plan it costs less then many smartphones. But I actually thought that Ballmer has a good point about the pricing. I guess that I was wrong too. But how long can the sales growth sustain, I have a few doubts that could be extinguished with continued revisions of an improve phone. The Euro-Asian market will get a ton of sales, but again new phones will emerge to compete, and I wonder some more. I guess time will tell. Until then, I will use my Treo. It's funny that I know 3 friends with an iPhone, all of which use Windows only.
Bill / Beanie
Can you give us some clues as to where this conversation may continue?
I think the iPhone is an interesting gadget but due to my financial status in the US I think it is a non starter for me.
Here is hoping that tomorrow brings us an iPod without the phone functionality....
What Balmer said was, "we sell millions and millions and millions of phones." Liar. MSFT doesn't sell any phones. They make software that runs on SOME phones. Balmer is scared. His company is not producing anything anyone really wants. And he is going to be the one who will be blamed when the ship goes down because he was at the helm. I like the quote I read last night: "Steve jobs is usually four steps ahead of you." And wait until tomorrow when the new iPod comes out and it makes the Zune look even more like the turd that it is.
When the iPhone usurps MSFT and Apple is selling "millions and millions and millions of phones" what will Balmer have to say then?
Yum! Crow tastes good with FUD.
I think Balmer was right all along, once everyone is done buying the iphone in mass quantities the other phones will keep selling as strong as ever and assume their normal market-share.
Micr@$oft = pwned!
"Anyone who has been discounting Apple's entry into the cell phone market as not important might want to re-evaluate their position."
I would still discount their entry into the market. My thoughts are that they WILL hit roughly 10 million in sales by end 08. A 1% of the market.
That iSupply report should not be taken as an absolute. You're reading into it without context. iSupply even states that it's possibly because of the initial popularity and pent up expectations for the device.
In short, it's not the short term sales that matter, but the long term outlook.
The iPhone is not a smartphone. It's a media phone at best. It's the media and every other "semi-expert" out there that claim the iphone is a smartphone. While it does share some similairities (which can be said of all mobile products), it certainly isn't in the smartphone category. It's marketed to a completely different audience than the smartphone audience.
Looking at Apple's recent announcements and the new product line-ups they have, I'm even more sure now that their aim really isn't to even try to dominate the mobilemarketspace. Their aim, at least for the near future, is to try to build a solid defense for it's massive marketshare loss to Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson in the mobile music market. SOny Ericsson & Nokia now rule the ipod market.
The massive price cut also says something more telling about how Apple intends to employ the iPhone in the market. It's defending itself from Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung in it's ipod market. Anyone who actually thought Apple was on the offensive is hiding behind illussion. The annoucement and release of the Iphone was a purely defensive maneuver with possibly the most fluff & bling I've ever seen to cover up that fact.
While iPhone will continue to sell well to it's intended 10 million goal (A large chunk of which will be sold in the USA), keep in mind it is not a smartphone (if it is, it is a somewhat unadvanced smartphone). It is a media/internet device with telephony functionality. It's not hard to see that simply by looking at their newest lineup of ipods from the nano to the touch ipod to the more "advanced" iphone. It all begins to makes more sense why certain functionality were also omitted from iphone.
cow:
"SOny Ericsson & Nokia now rule the ipod market."
Huh?? What?
Can I get some of what you're smoking?
Or did you just step out of some alternate universe transporter? Can I go buy some AAPL at $8 in that universe and bring it over to this universe to sell it?
I like my illusions. You can keep yours.
Ipod still dominate in the "MP3 player market", but the mp3 market as a whole is considered "mobile music market", of which Ipod roughly dominated the mobile music market with roughly 90% marketshare in 2004.
From 2004 thru 2006 when the mobile manufacturers started pushing their music phones into the mobile music market, ipod marketshare dropped to roughly 12%-14% (As announced by Apple)... a massive and rapid drop in only 2 years with music phones being sent to market to specifically take over this market. By start of 2007, music phones were outselling ipods in the mobile music market by 7 to 1.
Even with the launch of the new generation iPods, it's clear that it wasn't going to be enough...hence the big release of the iPhone 6 months before actual products arrived with an unsettled litigation on the iPhone name. Why would any company choose to blantantly launch a name that it is actively embroiled in legal matters for? Apple HAD to announce the iphone. They just couldn't wait any longer to do so. Their entry into the mobile music market was 2 years late as evidenced by the sheer amount of music phones outselling ipods (I'm talking globally here-i understand in the USA ipods still own like 40% market- rough guestimate). It was the best thing Jobs could have done. It scared the competition, put them back to the drawing boards, delayed the market for a while etc... it was purely defensive.
Or let me rephrase that, the iphone was a defensive maneuver and to some extent the new ipods..but you could see that at least in some ways, the ipods & Itunes were meant to be the offensive part of their 2007 strategy.
Note the sheer similarity of the iPod touch to the iPhone. At a glance you'd think that the two products would cannabalize each other. In some ways sure, but in my opinion, the Ipod touch is their offensive tool to pave the way for the iphone throughout the globe.
By the time iphone goes to market globally, ipod touch would have buttered up the mobile music field a bit more.
I'm fairly sure that the iphone was rushed to market (defensive). The lack of important features and the inconsistency from app to app in the iphone alludes to a rushed product that HAD to be put out there.
Anyway you don't necessarily have to agree with my stance on iphone & ipods but the reality is that Apple marketshare dropped to 12%-14%. The mobile music market is controlled by Nokia (who ships twice as many music phones than Apple ships ipods), LG, Sony Ericsson (Who's Walkman phones outsold ipods in the last 2 years), Samsung.
Commenting by HaloScan
