Ballmer Calls Android a "Press Release"

Bergkamp10 writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to shoot down Google's new mobile platform at a press conference in Tokyo. Ballmer called Android a mere 'press release' at present, and said the mobile platform market is 'Microsoft's world.' Ballmer dodged requests to comment on specifics of the Android software platform, preferring instead to highlight the successes of the Windows Mobile platform which he said is on 150 different handsets and is available from over 100 different mobile operators. 'Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile],' Ballmer said. 'Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world,' he added."

Vaporware?

Ballmer called Android a mere 'press release' at present

That's rich, coming from one of the greatest producers of vaporware in the world.

Re:Vaporware?

That's rich, coming from one of the greatest producers of vaporware in the world.

Be that as it may, Windows Mobile is in widespread use and Android isn't yet. I have little doubt that it will be adopted with great speed, but currently Mr Ballmer does have a point.

Re:Vaporware?

Windows Mobile is in widespread use

As an ex-user of Windows Mobile and now on Symbian, I'd say the market is still wide open for someone who can do it well.

WinCE is still crash-prone, clumsy and ugly on a handheld. Symbian is more stable and looks better, but still has glitches, and is much harder to develop for. Apple iPhone's locked down nature isn't suited to creating a new mobile software ecosystem, so if Google gets this right, they may have a new wave to ride.

Re:Vaporware?

I don't think you quite understand the situation here. Linux on the desktop was a hobbyist project until very recently. Hobbyist projects rarely amount to much: good programmers usually don't have a whole lot of spare time. Novell and Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth started pushing desktop Linux a couple of years ago, and it's already made tremendous gains. Linux is certainly pretty successful on the server, which is where 98% of the development effort was going. IBM and Redhat don't care about the desktop; they needed a server operating system, and they were quite successful at creating it.

The fact is, open-source is a highly efficient way to collaboratively develop software. It is a great framework for collaboration on a corporate level: it's simple and lightweight, with no complicated corporate agreements and resulting conflicts of interest. This is what Google is trying to accomplish here. If a few of the major 5-10 handset vendors gets serious and hires a few developers to push this platform along, it will quickly surpass anything Microsoft or Symbian can come up with, simply because the handset vendors know how to make phones and Microsoft doesn't. Google is just trying to kick-start the process.

Re:Vaporware?

I wonder whether you're being honest. I've used several Windows Mobile phones and can't think of a single crash - ever. Maybe I had one about a year ago when I installed some wierd app. Also, Windows Mobile has improved greatly in UI and Microsoft gives the handset makers pretty much total freedom to customize as they see fit. Windows Mobile is just a platform. It's the handset makers who do interesting things with it.

Re:Vaporware?

This just in, Loud mouth CEO down plays and insults competition. Really people, This is in no way suprising, of course Ballmer is going to insult anything that isnt microsoft. At this point I think we should all do our selves the favor of ignoring anything that comes out of his mouth these days. Except maybe to have the occasional laugh at something wildly outrageous.

Re:Vaporware?

Windows Mobile is on 150 different phones; and every one of them sucks.

Re:Vaporware?

Make that 151. Here's a scathing review [nytimes.com] of Windows Mobile 6 on what the reviewer thinks is a really great piece of hardware. Money quote:

If your Web browser can't play Flash videos, it should just say so. It should not say, "Make sure the path and file name are correct and that all the required libraries are available." (Insert your own joke here about double-checking the local public library's operating hours.)

Re:Vaporware?

If MS made vacuum cleaners? That's the only time their product wouldn't suck.

Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

This is the same guy who at one point ran around a COMDEX crashing OS/2 systems with a custom made application to put the lie to IBM's touting of its "crashproof" nature. He's been Microsoft's attack dog for the last 20 years and that's pretty much been his only role in the industry. What is the reason that I, or anyone else, should care what this professional troll thinks?

Re:Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

You are correct about his role at Microsoft. He really is Microsoft's attack dog, but regardless of what you and I think of him, he is correct. Microsoft has a great share of the mobile market and their software is actually quite good nowadays. And yes, Google's announcement is sort of a press release at the moment.

To sum things up, competition is good and Microsoft is going to get a taste of a company that can do more to mobile platforms than Symbian can (or so I expect).

Re:Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

Microsoft has a pretty good presence in the mobile market, but it is most definately not "Microsoft's World".

Steve is running scared. I'd say that over 75% of the Windows Mobile market consists of handsets manufactured by HTC and Motorola, with a good chunk of the rest being Samsung. Guess what - those two companies are part of Google's OHA. (I can't remember, is Samsung involved? Microsoft is really screwed if they are.)

Steve should shut up and stop attacking Android and figure out how to compete before Microsoft loses one of their largest handset manufacturers.

Re:Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

Microsoft has a great share of the mobile market and their software is actually quite good nowadays.

Nice astroturf attempt, but too many people here have tried to use Windows Mobile handhelds.

Their software is not good. It's not stable. It's resource hungry. The interface is intrusive and ugly. The only advantage for users of the platform is the development tools available.

If Palm hadn't dropped the ball, Google might have had a fight on their hands. As it is, the field's open.

Re:Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

Yes, Microsoft are the dominant smartphone platform right now, and Android is nothing more than an announcement. But that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft have seriously rested on their laurels with their pocket OS. For a company that likes to include the word "innovation" in just about any phrase they utter, there's not much of that going on in the mobile arena at all. Their most cutting edge and innovative effort to date has probably been the Windows Mobile Search app. Perhaps if they let those guys loose on the OS, we might actually see some real innovation. They've just dicked around with the look of WM, without any significant changes of any sort. Adding HTML email support to Pocket Outlook and calling that a significant OS enhancement, just because those apps are bundled with the OS, is skirting the issue that they have no real will to make any serious OS advances. They're pretty much stagnant and at a complete stand still. WM6 is still clumsy and helpless with regards to resource use. It needs a complete overhaul of how it handles application life cycles. Starting apps and having no real concept of when to stop them again--because hey, you might need them again, and keeping them loaded will improve loading times--is hardly a viable approach when PIE plus another app (say mobile search) will often exhaust available memory and prevent you from even popping up the Contacts list to make a call (this IS a phone, after all!), let alone the camera or any other such unnecessary luxuries. I don't know how often I've tried to pop up the camera app on my HTC Dash to capture a quick moment, only to be told that there's not enough memory and basta. Only extreme self control and the disdain for blowing $200 in a flash have prevented me from smashing the phone against the nearest wall in such moments. Microsoft, that's not how a mobile OS is supposed to behave. If Android does better than that, you will be pushed into total irrelevance within a few short years.

Re:Does anyone care what Ballmer thinks on this?

I agree with everything you've said, except for "resting on their laurels". WM hasn't been given any laurels. At all. We're in the middle of a deployment of these units to our sales staff and they're outright awful, regardless of the vendor source. Applications hang and lock the whole device, database stores get corrupt (oh, good job on persistent storage, guys--next time, how about an FS that doesn't cheese files on reboot) phone functionality is iffy and the hardware runs the gamut from "okay" (MotoQ, iPaq 6900) to outright awful (some of the dime-a-dozen Taiwanese makes). There are bugs in the platform that make, say, mail so bad that you pretty much have to use Exchange or replace Pocket Outlook with a third-party mail client. The aforementioned cemail.vol corruption problem is astounding: you can pretty much cheese your mailbox just by resetting the device while checking mail (which you will have to do because it will crash). It took a lot of digging to find out that the only option is to blow away the mailbox, which is really hard to do as the file is locked on device bootup. Exchange makes this a little less painful, but only slightly. This behaviour exists in any app on any WM5+ handheld that uses Microsoft's database volumes (eg, any app that wants to keep client-side data) and is a side effect of adding persistent storage without a decent FS. Before WM5, your handheld would self-erase upon power loss or hard crash. WM2003 was about as safe as it got, but with WM2003 you don't get push mail, persistent storage and a whole lot of other services. Contrast this with BlackBerry. Then there's device management (or rather, there **isn't** device management). You have to buy Exchange to do remote-wipe and SMS (or a third party app) to do anything else, and even then it barely does anything. And then there's ActiveSync, which is a tool of Satan. I can think of no other better evidence of Microsoft's monopoly effect in action than WM: no other company could have released something as patently awful and sucker so many people into using it unless they had another market they could leverage. It's especially amazing when in the other corner you have BlackBerry, which provides a rock-solid experience, great management tools and perfect push/sync (MS' push/sync is a nasty hack, by comparison. Sure, you can Frankenstein your implementation with third-party tools, but by that point you're in interoperability hell and the devices are still hanging and pissing users off. And god help you make third-party WM software to overcome MS's problems, because if you get wide enough adoption Microsoft will either buy you out (if you're lucky) or release a shoddy competitor (if you're not). WM is simply a vehicle to enable developers to take the path of least resistance. If it wasn't for the huge Windows developer base (and Microsoft's combination of deep pockets and sheer bloody-mindedness), this platform would be dead. It's scary to think that WM6 is, what, the eigth iteration of this product and it still can't hold a candle to the Newton Messagepad 2000, let alone BlackBerry.

delusions of grandeur

he is correct. Microsoft has a great share of the mobile market and their software is actually quite good nowadays. And yes, Google's announcement is sort of a press release at the moment.

Have a look at the market share figures:

http://x.msmobiles.com/portal/images/other/symbian-market-share.jpg [msmobiles.com]

Microsoft's worldwide presence is a joke. In fact, Linux is already far more widely used worldwide than Microsoft, Palm, and RIM combined.

And yes, Google's announcement is sort of a press release at the moment.

It's a press release for something that is going to be available in less than a week for developers, with a dozen industry heavyweights behind it. That's not just a press release.

Wel...

"Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world"

Ok - Ballmer's a nut job sure, but is he saying anything absolutely, quantifiably wrong or deceitful here? The only part anyone could have any contention with is the "great software" part, I suppose.

Re:Wel...

My thoughts exactly.

The title of the story made it sound like he said, "Android? That's just a press release, nothing more!"

Instead he made an insightful comment about MS's position in the Mobile OS market compared to Google's.

Re:Wel...

A translation might be in order:

"Right now they have a press release" means "their design is already better than ours".

"we have many, many millions of customers" means "alot of people are looking for an alternative"

"great software" means "bloated software"

"many hardware devices" means "we're still trying to build a good one"

" and they're welcome in our world" means "they're violating our patents!".

Re:Wel...

Ballmer's a nut job sure, but is he saying anything absolutely, quantifiably wrong or deceitful here?

Well, it's somewhat deceitful to try to sound like MS owns the mobile space, when really they're 3rd or fourth place. "Welcome to our house?" Yes, welcome to last place in the smartphone OS marketplace.

Re:Wel...

Phone software can be much better... perhaps Google can help make it better.

For a good review of the latest Windows Mobile version 6 on state of the art hardware, see the NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/technology/personaltech/08pogue.html?ref=business [nytimes.com]

I especially like his simple list of suggestions to Microsoft to fix severe usability problems such as: 'If it takes four presses on the More button just to see everything in the Start menu -- and you provide no direct way to get to the first page from the last -- you need to redesign.'

And... '...over all, it's a shame that such bloated, baffling software runs a phone whose hardware is so close to perfect.'

Lets translate this

Right now they have a press release

TRANSLATION: so here is one my own. Their contains dates and promises with a history to back it up. Mine contains nothing.

we have many, many millions of customers

TRANSLATION: we got less then 10% of the market, we are so small Apple might overtake us with just one phone.

great software

TRANSLATION: Oh come one, am I trying to kid. It is the sucks and the only people that use Windows Mobile are those who absolutly have too. If it was so great we wouldn't be such a small player. Really, go to a european or japanese mobile phone dealer and try to find a MS phone. Thank god for our lock on the desktop or we would really be nothing. Curse you blackberry!

many hardware devices

TRANSLATION: we just can't shift them so we keep trying with lots of new devices hoping one day to get it right. Curse you steve jobs for doing it in one!

they're welcome in our world

TRANSLATION: and in our world the sky is pink with polka dots Wheee! I am not crazy, I am an airplane!

So no, nothing he says is actually a lie, it is just... man it is hard to remain serious about this. The symbian one was laughable enough, this is just, it is almost sad.

I have to keep telling myself it is his job to say that and that he probably knows that it is all a big lie, because if he really believes what he says he really needs to seek proffesional help.

Some people point out that he has no choice but to say this, he needs to reasue stockholders. That is true. Up to a point. But if you are a MS stockholder, does this reassure you? Because it just sends up a huge red flag to me that this guy has no clue how to deal with the fact that MS Windows Mobile just ain't doing that well and is now facing two new competitors (Apple and Google) who seem to have a very big clue, wrapper around a stick and are paddling his flabby ass.

Their world? Yeah right!

I've been sorely disappointed by each version of Windows CE/CE.net/Mobile. I've got many gripes including battery life, locking up when the battery runs down, losing everything when the battery runs down, wifi issues, inability to play video despite 400 MHz ARM processors, no upgrades to the OS are available to consumers, features are tied to OS upgrades... Windows PDAs stink for all those reasons!

Re:Their world? Yeah right!

Upgrade to something like Familiar, (or anything down the Open Embedded line) pretty much everything you mentioned goes away, battery life improves, you can watch full length DVD's (albeit at a small resolution), plus as a bonus you can use the unstable releases and retain those MS random lock ups, but in exchange for more features. Oh and if you use a PDA for reading Ebooks, then Opie-Reader is definitely the way to go, the best reader, once you have converted them all to text or html of course (but then I do that whenever I get an ebook anyway).

What happens...

...when the 'press release' takes as much market share from Microsoft as, say, Google's search engine has? Investors try to plan ahead - customers now aren't as important as customers tomorrow. Honestly, if I had my choice I'd picka Google-run mobile simply because I trust them more to be innovative and customer-centered. I think vista has shown us that simply 'owning the market' so-to-speak isn't going to get you incredibly far anymore.

He's always trying to steal the hype

Like when he faked laughter at the iPhone [youtube.com]. What can you do? The guy has to try to sell his cruft, and when his competitors get a lot of attention, he has to do something.
He obviously can't upstage them with functionality or stability (I have a Windows Mobile lying on a shelf, gathering dust), so he'll have to try name-calling.

Re:remind me again...

LOOK OUT!!!

(grabs advocate_one and pushes him to the floor as a chair whooshes overhead)

Wow, it must be good

First Symbian now Microsoft. It sure has the two competitors in a uproar.

You want to know the really funny thing, although I heard about the google phone, it is through this press release by MS and Symbian I learned that it is called Android and that it was officially announced. Thanks to these nice companies for helping me spot that I missed the original press-release by google itself (surely the world ain't so ironic that the original story never made slashdot?).

Okay, enough fun, on with a serious comment.

Taking bets, when a MS employee leaves to work on the google phone, what will Steve Ballmer throw, shouting "I will fucking bury Google, I failed to do so once, and I will fail to do so again."

• A chair (it didn't work before, but hey, give the guy credit for persistence)
• His desk (He has been working out)
• A hissyfit
• CowboyNeal

Product release Monday

Yes it's a press release, made 7 days before the SDK is released on Monday. How long was Vista a press release for?

Methinks

When I first heard the form that Google's entry into the mobile phone market would take, I was disappointed. But after seeing this reaction, and to a much lesser extent Symbian's, I'm all of a sudden thinking there must be something to Android.

MS accusing someone else of FUD?

That's just unnatural...

Windows Vista was a just press release too...

... but things went very wrong and got released. May God have mercy on your soul, Ballmer.

Re:hmm

I am not a huge fan of google these days (various reasons) but I was there for an interview and I was not allowed to 'see' things in certain buildings or offices. they all told me there was some hardware being worked on and that if I even saw it, I'd 'know' what they were working on. this was a few months ago.

I now 'get it'. its the phone they were working on.

I think its real. and they seem to be putting a LOT of energy into this project, too.

I doubt its vaporware.

Re:hmm

I am not a huge fan of google these days [...] I was there for an interview ...

I know how you feel. I also didn't get an offer.