Microsoft's Chief
Included are some Steve Ballmer predictions over the last few years. I wish I got paid as much to sound that foolish..."
October 4, 2004 - "We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'. Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use."
May 16, 2005 - According to this concept developed by Ballmer, the online search engines represent the key points of the future technology, and the leader in this domain, none other than Google, is destined to perish in less than five years. These predictions belong exclusively to Microsoft's CEO who sounds a little like Bill Gates announcing iPod's death.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ballmer-Google-might-dissapear-in-the-nex...
March 29, 2006 - Do you have an iPod?
No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
Think you can you crack the iPod market?
It's going to take an innovative proposition. In five years are people really going to carry two devices? One device that is their communication device, one device that is music? There's going to be a lot of opportunities to get back in that game. We want to be in that game. Expect to see announcements from us in that area in the next 12 months.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/04/03/837304...
February 19, 2007 - "Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we'll make some piracy improvements this year."
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/680/1047680/ballmer-blames-pira...
April 30, 2007 - "Now we'll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players," Ballmer continued. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ce...
April 30, 2007 - Q: Google has been rolling out applications that are very similar to Office. Are you concerned about competition from Internet-based applications?
A: They've come out with what I might call — what's the politically correct way of saying it? — they've come out with some of the lowest functionality, lowest capability applications of all time. (Laughter.) If you want to sit and write a paper for school, you're not going to use Google Docs. You can't even put a footnote in. Now, last time I checked, that's still kind of important to give attribution. (Laughter.) There are some basic, basic things that you just don't find. In the short run, we don't have a lot of competition; in the long run, sure. We always have some competition. We have competition from OpenOffice. We have competition from StarOffice. We're going to have competition from Google. We have competition from IBM. And competition is a very good thing for Google to give us, and for us to give Google.
Q: When can we look forward to a Zune phone?
A: It's not a concept you'll ever get from us. We're in the Windows Mobile business. We wouldn't define our phone experience just by music. A phone is really a general purpose device. You want to make telephone calls, you want to get and receive messages, text, e-mail, whatever your preference is. The phone really is kind of a general purpose device that we need to have clean and easy to use.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ce...
Oh, Ballmer...
