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Even if the iPhone delivered much more than what was already available on Windows Mobile (doubtful, considering that Microsoft's software was years of developme
by gary17the 5y ago
Even if the iPhone delivered much more than what was already available on Windows Mobile (doubtful, considering that Microsoft's software was years of development ahead, functionality-wise), it's still incomprehensible to me why a company as massively experienced as Microsoft did not react as quickly as possible by copying iPhone features to improve Windows Mobile, but instead delayed their time-to-market for years by going the Windows Phone route.
Probably, it was not Apple's ingenuity that won the battle, but Microsoft's stupidity not to improve their product ASAP that lost the battle.
- fbanon 5y agoInternal politics + bean counters at the wheels.
- marcodave 5y agoYou're talking about the biggest IT company which in 2006 was redesigning their whole big boy Windows. Ballmer was deriding the iPhone by not having a keyboard, therefore being just a gimmick not worth of being a work device. Plus, probably in 2007 having access a capacitive touch screens was most likely not so simple as today. The availability was limited. Plus, the apps were designed around having a physical keyboard and buttons available.
- AdrianB1 5y agoYou need to take in consideration that big corporations are more often slow, bureaucratic, in decision paralysis and having in control people that are managers, not innovators. Microsoft is one of these from time to time, it is a pendulum swing. Steve Balmer was a marketing guy, not an innovator like Steve Jobs. If you look closely, being an innovator is not the path to success, Steve jobs was fired by a bureaucrat (and the board) at Apple, Elon Musk caught a lot of flak at all times, etc. The cancer of incompetent managers is a recurring plague in companies and generalized in governments, that's life. There are exceptions, but they are not the rule.