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by awucs 2849 days ago
People often quote that, but I don't think he was necessarily wrong. What happened wasn't really so much between Apple and Microsoft, as Google giving away Android. That made all the other, arguably better, offerings redundant. Also letting Apple take a lot more market share because of quality and fragmentation issues. Almost no one makes any money from smart phones. Microsoft is probably fourth in terms of profit (from patents and such) behind Apple, Google and Samsung. Though Microsoft might have lost more in terms of influence and maneuvering.

Addition: Which part, if any, are the downvoters objecting to? From the people I have talked to in the industry that is exactly what happened and why a lot of companies got out of it.
1 comments
ChrisSD 2849 days ago
The iPhone was beating MS phones before Android was even a thing[0]. They were certainly way more than "2% or 3%" in the markets they operated in. I can't see how Ballmer's statement was even slightly correct.

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-s...

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awucs 2849 days ago
I don't think "2% or 3%" was very realistic, but you have to remember that when the iPhone first came out it wasn't very good. I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things). Apple was certainly ahead, but the market also wasn't ready nor big at that. When it actually matured there were a couple of solid offerings including from Microsoft, which among other things had arguably better design than Android. But at that point the market was moving on. The non-Apple market was no longer about selling the operating system or phones but apps, ads, components or accessories. If people want to go "Haha Microsoft" I guess that is fine, but they didn't lose to Apple.
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IkmoIkmo 2849 days ago
> (nor a couple of other things).

Some other fun ones to mention:

didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone), didn't let you record video, and didn't let you make a selfie while looking at the screen. (no front-facing camera)

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vxNsr 2848 days ago
didn't let you make a selfie while looking at the screen. (no front-facing camera)

To be fair no smartphone did in the first couple years.

didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone)

I got the iphone right after this shipped just by chance, and I couldn't understand how anyone lived without it. Also the had just added the "task switcher" carousel and the precursor to the control center, both features I used heavily and was surprised to learn didn't exist just a few months prior.

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mrep 2848 days ago
> I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things)

I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores.

> iPhone first came out it wasn't very good

Unequivocally false! It did everything a normal phone did fine. However, it did something no other phone came close to offering and it singly handley made it the best mobile device. It had an astoundingly intuitive and fast UX for browsing the web combined with an unlimited data plan. That's why I convinced my parents to drive me to the apple store so I could buy it despite the high price (they had to reduce the price by 200$ soon after because it was so freaking high (400-500$ for a phone in 2007)). The phone and app stuff was all moot. I wanted to be able to browse the web just as well as I did on a computer anywhere and everywhere and the iphone was what completely revolutionized that.

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scarface74 2848 days ago
I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores.

Sprint had been advertising its “Vision network” since at least 2005.

“Sprint Navigation” powered by Telemachus was a J2ME app that was an add on service in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeleNav

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fulafel 2848 days ago
iPhone's competitors did have GPS & 3G: http://archive.fortune.com/2007/10/04/technology/nokia_N95.f...

(The timeline varied a lot by your country - I saw the iPhone available a year later than N95)

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