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Steve Ballmer's infamous remarks on competition with Apple, after the iPhone announcement in 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.yout

Steve Ballmer's infamous remarks on competition with Apple, after the iPhone announcement in 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U "Let's take phones first. Right now, we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace, and, let's see." Times change.

Alex3917 10y ago
And he was right, they had to substantially lower the price almost immediately.
- zbyte64 10y ago
  And also lacked a keyboard. I mean how do you check your email without a keyboard?!?
  - Ezhik 10y ago
    I understand why people reacted the way they did. Honestly, when iPhone first came out it was pretty much a toy. No apps? Even dumbphones could run J2ME stuff! It's only when iPhones got the App Store that things got serious. But anyone who didn't see the danger of that "toy" running actual apps, or didn't see the need to revamp their user interface to beat, ended up losing.
    - hughw 10y ago
      iPhone was great before apps. The full featured touch browser was a revelation. You could look up anything, from anywhere. I still spend 70% of my time in the iPhone browser, not in apps.
    - stouset 10y ago
      By "reacted the way they did" you mean "bought all of them as they hit the shelves"? Apple captured 20% of the smartphone market the first quarter the iPhone was released, outselling Nokia, Palm, and Motorola combined. Nobody was seemingly all that upset they couldn't play yet another crappy J2ME version of "snake" that took 45 seconds to load. Roughly 0% of consumers knew what the hell J2ME even was. They did, however, see a cell phone with an actual web browser instead of some low-res, Javascriptless WAP disappointment. Not to mention a YouTube client and a decent camera plus photo app.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    I did wonder that to myself as I stood in the rain yesterday trying to compose an email on a damp screen with the phone typing garbage due to conflicting inputs. Touch screens are great for consumption and lousy for creation. Even this comment required eleven corrections to the swiped words. Twelve.
- stouset 10y ago
  "Had to"!? You have selective memory. They did in fact lower the price, but they were literally selling them as fast as they could make them at the time. They sold over a million in the first three months, and ran out of the 4GB model entirely in that period.
protomyth 10y ago
I do believe the Razor when it came out was in the $500+ range. Of course, it dropped quite a bit.
NovaS1X 10y ago
It's off-putting how he mentions "business won't like this". Like, they're the only market that matters. This aligns pretty well with my negative experiences with Microsoft products. It's an all businessmen/sales mentality. Maybe it was hard for them to see that consumer hardware/software would become the predominant force in modern tech.
- toast0 10y ago
  Business was the vast majority of who was buying smartphones at the time.
  - stouset 10y ago
    And their failure to predict, understand, or react to that shift in the market is precisely why they're in the position they are today.
  - wvenable 10y ago
    It should have been obvious from RIM's early success in the consumer market, for which they didn't try for or really support, that smartphones were well on their way to being a major consumer product. Microsoft themselves used the strategy of Windows at home and at school to sell to Windows to businesses (and vice-versa).
blub 10y ago
I assume you foresaw what would happen, bought Apple stock and you're posting this from your yacht. Because it was very reasonable to say that in 2007, and he even included a "let's see" at the end. What would one expect? For him to cower in fear and start crying? It took many iterations for the iPhone to catch up and many screw-ups from competitors, Nokia in particular.

Alex3917 10y ago

And he was right, they had to substantially lower the price almost immediately.

zbyte64 10y ago
And also lacked a keyboard. I mean how do you check your email without a keyboard?!?
- Ezhik 10y ago
  I understand why people reacted the way they did. Honestly, when iPhone first came out it was pretty much a toy. No apps? Even dumbphones could run J2ME stuff! It's only when iPhones got the App Store that things got serious. But anyone who didn't see the danger of that "toy" running actual apps, or didn't see the need to revamp their user interface to beat, ended up losing.
  - hughw 10y ago
    iPhone was great before apps. The full featured touch browser was a revelation. You could look up anything, from anywhere. I still spend 70% of my time in the iPhone browser, not in apps.
  - stouset 10y ago
    By "reacted the way they did" you mean "bought all of them as they hit the shelves"? Apple captured 20% of the smartphone market the first quarter the iPhone was released, outselling Nokia, Palm, and Motorola combined. Nobody was seemingly all that upset they couldn't play yet another crappy J2ME version of "snake" that took 45 seconds to load. Roughly 0% of consumers knew what the hell J2ME even was. They did, however, see a cell phone with an actual web browser instead of some low-res, Javascriptless WAP disappointment. Not to mention a YouTube client and a decent camera plus photo app.
- dingaling 10y ago
  I did wonder that to myself as I stood in the rain yesterday trying to compose an email on a damp screen with the phone typing garbage due to conflicting inputs. Touch screens are great for consumption and lousy for creation. Even this comment required eleven corrections to the swiped words. Twelve.
stouset 10y ago
"Had to"!? You have selective memory. They did in fact lower the price, but they were literally selling them as fast as they could make them at the time. They sold over a million in the first three months, and ran out of the 4GB model entirely in that period.

protomyth 10y ago

I do believe the Razor when it came out was in the $500+ range. Of course, it dropped quite a bit.

NovaS1X 10y ago

It's off-putting how he mentions "business won't like this". Like, they're the only market that matters. This aligns pretty well with my negative experiences with Microsoft products. It's an all businessmen/sales mentality. Maybe it was hard for them to see that consumer hardware/software would become the predominant force in modern tech.

toast0 10y ago
Business was the vast majority of who was buying smartphones at the time.
- stouset 10y ago
  And their failure to predict, understand, or react to that shift in the market is precisely why they're in the position they are today.
- wvenable 10y ago
  It should have been obvious from RIM's early success in the consumer market, for which they didn't try for or really support, that smartphones were well on their way to being a major consumer product. Microsoft themselves used the strategy of Windows at home and at school to sell to Windows to businesses (and vice-versa).

blub 10y ago

I assume you foresaw what would happen, bought Apple stock and you're posting this from your yacht. Because it was very reasonable to say that in 2007, and he even included a "let's see" at the end. What would one expect? For him to cower in fear and start crying? It took many iterations for the iPhone to catch up and many screw-ups from competitors, Nokia in particular.