Microsoft Head Seems to Think the iPhone Isn't a Threat

At some point in the future we will look back at Microsoft and evaluate how the company did under Bill Gates vs. Steve Ballmer. I'm sure many Apple fans are a bit worried about whether Apple will have the same problems when Steve Jobs moves on. Microsoft seems to be falling more and more into a defensive posture lately, on many fronts. Chief among them is Windows Mobile, particularly when up against the iPhone.

Now Ballmer is trying the approach of dismissing them as basically being hype. This is pretty amazing, given that the Apple iPhone has turned the whole mobile industry on its head. Its clear to me that Apple has done more in a year to get the PDAPhone into the mainstream than Microsoft has done in the eight years prior. Microsoft could have owned and dominated the PDAPhone space given their head start, and lackluster innovation from their chief competitor - Palm. But instead of being innovative, they've rested on their past success and left many parts of Windows Mobile largely unchanged year, after year, after year.

So now we get to the part of Ballmer's comments that makes you go, "Huh?". In an interview this week, Ballmer said that, "The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry," he said. "And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android." Apple and RIM don't license their operating systems to other hardware makers, so how coudl they have momentum with device manufacturers? That doesn't make any sense. And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "consumer market mojo" what is worth the big bucks? What he's basically saying is that the customers really want iPhones and Blackberries, but they have a tighter relationship with the carriers so they will prevail. Again I say, "Huh?". Don't the carriers want products that have "consumer market mojo"? Look at AT&T's success over the last two years since they added the iPhone?

If I'm missing something here, please feel free to correct me but Ballmer's comments don't seem to make any logical sense, and it appears that the emperor has no cloths here.