OK, I’ll stick this right out there. I’ve met Bill Gates *. You may remember the guy, he used to be the CEO of Microsoft and is now Chairman. Nowadays Steve Ballmer is generally the guy you see bouncing around on stage, but Bill Gates is still held in high regard even though he’s not in the office quite so much.
During an interview on the CBS show “This Morning” he admitted that Microsoft did miss the boat somewhat when it comes to launching mobile tech. Here’s a transcript of the clip below (from around 3.30)..
Bill Gates – There’s a lot of things, like cellphones, where we didn’t get out in the lead very early.
Charlie Rose Gates – Why not? Did you just miss that? Did you miss cellphones? Did you miss search?
Bill Gates – No, we didn’t miss cellphones, but the way we went about it didn’t allow us to get the leadership, so it’s clearly a mistake.
Bill is quite up front about that. He believes that they didn’t get the product out quickly enough. The way they did it – the working methods within the company, the testing, the research, the whole “start to finish” just wasn’t performed properly. It almost sounds like there’s a culture issue.
Check out the full video below..
Link – CBS News
* When I say “met”, I mean that I was within 6 feet of him and he was on stage, flanked by two security guards
Mmm its good that bill gates is finally admitting this but it has taken a while hasn’t it?
We have all said what Bill just said months ago.
Come on MS. Windows Phones looking good now. Keep innovating.
he wasnt talking about windows phone, he was talking about the windows mobile ecosystem.
There biggest mistake was to think of a mobile as a PC and stick a PC front end on to it. AKA: Windows Mobile.