Tuesday 6 November 2012

Ballmer: Apple has not produced a product that customers use

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Someone in Redmond, WA needs to call the folks with the straitjackets, as it appears that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has gone certifiably bonkers. AllThingsD's John Paczkowski notes that in a recent interview with CNBC, Ballmer went on record as saying that "I don't think anybody has done a product that is the product that I see customers wanting. You can go through the products from all those guys ... and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon."
Okaayyyyy, Steve. Just put down the Microsoft Surface and sit down, and let's talk about this. What about the 100 million iPads that Apple has sold in a little over two years? How about the Amazon Kindle Fire, which (despite the company refusing to release actual sales figures) is supposedly the best-selling Amazon product ever?
Ballmer is maintaining that everyone wants the Surface, which he touts as the product that can be both PC and tablet, at play and at work. Perhaps it's the stress of last week's product launch of Windows 8 and Surface, or maybe the fact that the company is spending an estimated $1.5 billion to launch those products that's causing him to lose sight of reality.
Paczkowski ends his post by saying that "Maybe Microsoft will change users' expectations for tablets. But after two and half years and 100 million iPads sold, it's not going to be easy."

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