Microsoft's Steve Ballmer : Lots of talk, but no iPad competitor...yet
Fortune's tech blogger, Philip Elmer-DeWitt has a pretty good post recapping Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's comments on the tablet market, dominated right now by Apple's iPad.
Microsoft has been in the tablet game for years, but was never able to bring the product into the mainstream. Apple has done it in a matter of months. Which is why Ballmer's comments during Microsoft's annual meeting with financial analysts are interesting and kinda fun to read.
(Note: I'm not a Microsoft hater; it just makes for intriguing news to see a CEO scrambling to make his company look relevant in a hot consumer space, the tablet market.)
My favorite quote from Balmer:
"We've got everything on our side if we do things really right." (emphasis mine)
That's a big if, Steve. Microsoft got Windows 7 right, though (and it's selling like hotcakes) so I'm not gonna count you guys out in the tablet market. But it seems like, by now, Apple will likely have a year's lead in the tablet marketplace.
Will we see a Windows-based tablet by the end of the year? I hope so.
Comments
I'll be first in line for Windows tablet :)
Posted by: bob e | July 30, 2010 10:14 AM
Innovation ? Microsoft ?
Every thing they produce was a copy of someone else's idea.
Office : Visicalc,Wordperfect...
IE: Netscape, Firefox
Media Player - Realplayer etc
Were it NOT for Steve Jobs ( who will tell you that he did copy stuff from Xerox Parc), we'd still have black/orange text on our monitors. All they do at MSFT is copy original ideas and 'hopefully' put that guy out of business: thereby 'capturing that market". Then they can raise prices.
Posted by: bobb | July 30, 2010 12:05 PM
Google "Microsoft Courier", it's already past prototyping.
Posted by: Jordan | August 5, 2010 11:00 AM
Development of "Microsoft Courier", a tablet project, was cancelled by Ballmer & friends in April of this year. Just after consumers began taking delivery of the first iPads. I guess they felt it couldn't compete.
Posted by: Jeff | August 22, 2010 6:44 PM
The courier project appears dead. it appears that a number of android tablets are on the verge, though.
Posted by: steve | August 22, 2010 7:01 PM
Microsoft is for old people, It's a dead company with dead ideas.
Posted by: Mark | August 23, 2010 8:40 AM
Microsoft is a dead company with dead ideas. They just copy Apple.
Posted by: Mark | August 23, 2010 8:41 AM
Hey Bobb,
You sound like another Apple Fan Boy. Anything they do is great.
I have an Ipad, it's nice for what it is, but over priced. It's not for buisness. You can buy a netbook cheaper and better that can do more.
Remember those Vista Apple Ads, how they made fun of the security prompts, that Vista does, Well for all Apple crying, they still do the same thing but worse, instead of just clicking a button you have to type your password in and click a button. Isn't that the pot callign the kettle black.
Apple: designed in California, yet but made and put together in China, just like every other tech company.
Posted by: Ryan G | August 23, 2010 8:45 AM