Microsoft CEO Ballmer still thinks iPhones are too expensive, opens door to Microsoft doing their own phone

Jordan Kahn

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been making the rounds following the launch of Windows 8 and Surface, and yesterday he sat down for an interview in Santa Clara with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. TechCrunch pointed us to audio from the interview (embedded above), where Ballmer is asked about the role of Windows Phone 8 within the iOS- and Android-dominated smartphone market. Ballmer famously laughed about the iPhone’s high price point back in 2007, but apparently, the Microsoft CEO still thinks iPhones are priced too high. While claiming Android’s ecosystem is “not always in the consumer’s best interest,” Ballmer made a point of mentioning the high cost of iPhones abroad:

The ecosystem of Android is a little bit wild, from an app compatibility perspective, a malware perspective… maybe in a way that’s not always in the consumer’s best interest… conversely, the Apple ecosystem looks highly controlled, and by the way, quite high priced. The fact that we live in a country where almost every phone is subsidized, you may forget it. But I was in Russia last week where you pay $1000 for an iPhone.. you’re not going to sell that many iPhones… The question is how do you get the quality, but maybe not the premium price. A controlled, but maybe not quite as controlled ecosystem.

Reuters also has a quote of Ballmer from an event last night, when the CEO seemed to hint at the possibility of a Microsoft-branded smartphone: Read more

Microsoft’s lost decade, chronicled

Jordan Kahn

In a lengthy piece, titled “Microsoft’s Lost Decade”, Kurt Eichenwald of Vanity Fair profiled CEO Steve Ballmer and his role in the company’s steadily decreasing dominance. The piece includes interviews with current and past executives of the company, thousands of internal docs and legal records, and, not surprisingly, Apple’s role in the decline of Microsoft makes up a large part of the story:

Truly, for senior management, the problems didn’t make sense. Microsoft had some of the smartest people in the technology business. It had billions of dollars at its disposal, and the ability to throw that money into any project the executives chose… Current and former executives said that, each year, they tried to explain to Microsoft’s top executives why the company was struggling in the quality of its innovation compared with Apple… Exhibit A: today the iPhone brings in more revenue than the entirety of Microsoft… One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion.

One anecdote covered in the story comes from emails that circulated around Microsoft following the introduction of Tiger:
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Microsoft to announce slates to take on the iPad at CES

Seth Weintraub

(I checked the date.  It says today.)  The NYTimes says that Microsoft is going to announce some iPad competin’ Slates at CES:

Next month, at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft will present a slew of new slates that it hopes will offer some competition to the Apple iPad, which has quickly become the leader in this market.

According to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is expected to  announce a number of these devices when he takes the stage at C.E.S., showcasing devices built by Samsung and Dell, among a number of other manufacturing partners.

This apparently has been an anual event since 2000. Read more