Newsmaker: Ballmer: Calling on mobile

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This week's announcements were around manageability and deployment, seemingly things that really play to the IT crowd that in many cases is not only buying the devices, but saying which devices can come into the network.
Ballmer: Most phones would not be bought today by IT. Most phones today would have a consumer buying aspect to them. As increasingly people want to use these in enterprise processes, IT comes into it.

One of the distinguished engineers on the Windows team briefly talked about this MinWin project, the idea that the Windows core could be much smaller. Do you see a need for a full version of Windows running on smaller devices? Or is the MinWin idea something that could help?
Ballmer: We've got a great platform for mobile phones today in Windows CE and Windows Mobile and we are going to continue to push it hard.

When you look at the mobile space, who do you see as your biggest competitor? A few years ago, I know you would have said Nokia. Where do they compare with, say, Google, Apple?
Ballmer: I think that today we probably say Symbian, not Nokia, but Symbian is a competitor, certainly an important competitor. Then, I think you look at the new cast of characters--RIM, Google--potentially--everybody says they'll be a competitor, but we'll see what that looks like. You know, Google, Apple and RIM would probably shine out because they are primarily software plays in some ways.

Video: Ballmer: 'Vista is great for consumers'
Microsoft CEO talks about Vista's critics and the European Union's regulatory rulings.

How important is Live to the Mobile strategy and Mobile to the Live strategy?
Ballmer: The Mobile strategy better work independent of Live, and the Live strategy better work independent of Mobile, and Live and Mobile better be better together. You could say that's a tall order, but that's what we get paid to do.

You guys have seemed to strike partnerships along those lines, bringing competitive Web services on to Windows Mobile, and bringing Live on to competing devices.
Ballmer: We've been through this before in some senses with Windows. Office was important for Windows, and Windows was important for Office, and they had to be better together. But, particularly, Office has to be better than anything else running on Windows and, you know, we took Office to the Mac. So there was a lot of familial love, and yet people have to be able to stand for themselves.

In terms of mobile devices, I mean, most of the attention is around Windows Mobile, but you have launched this Zune effort to go after the music player market. It seems like Apple with the iPod Touch and some of the things they've done since the Zune came out, has delivered more innovation in that 12 months than the Zune team. Is there a concern with that, since Zune was already coming a little bit late to the market?
Ballmer: I probably wouldn't agree with you that they've done more in the last 12 months than we've done in the last 12 months. And I think we'll continue to pick up share. I mean, we launched Zune a year ago. In the first year, at the price points where we compete, we've taken 10 to 15 percent share. We've got new models at other price points. I think we'll continue to take share. I think it's a long-term deal. We could have left it alone and let Apple have free run of the market. We think we've got some innovative ideas and we'll see whether the market agrees with us.

Why is it important to compete in dedicated music player market?
Ballmer: There's really no such thing as a dedicated music player. There's music services that may run on dedicated players. There's music services and an entertainment service. I mean, clearly, one of the keys for the iPhone is that it runs the Apple music services. And I think that will be an important direction.

There's a service pack coming for Vista, but there hasn't been a tremendous amount of buzz around that since you guys said it's basically going to be a collection of patch rollouts. Was that a missed opportunity? Wouldn't you rather see more excitement around Vista?
Ballmer: We have a lot of activity. And certainly, Vista is very popular right now in the marketplace, particularly in the consumer side. And when we actually ship the service pack, I suspect that would be the appropriate time to continue to dial up the level of energy and excitement around that on the business side.

Are you pleased with where Vista is? I mean, a lot of people have criticized it in the last few months saying that instead of building momentum, it seems to be getting less mind share, particularly on the consumer side.
Ballmer: That's certainly not true on the consumer side. I mean, it's ironic. We have a lot of momentum on the consumer side. Yes, there's one or two models you can find someplace in the world of PCs that don't run Windows Vista. But the machines that sell all run Windows Vista. We have a lot of consumer interest and enthusiasm around it. And, as is normal with a new OS release, there are some issues we're going to have to continue to polish and make it more and more appealing.

Microsoft recently announced a final settlement with the EU. What does settling that mean, and why did it take as long as it did?
Ballmer: Well, we didn't settle. We're in compliance. We moved to be in complete compliance with the 2004 decision that the commission took, and that's good. We've been trying to comply, but we are glad we were able to meet the issues the commission laid out in terms of compliance with its 2004 decision.

The other thing we decided to do was not appeal to the European Court of Justice. We've had our most important appellate opportunity. We got a fairly clear signal back from the Court of First Instance. I think we have to recognize we are where we are and we're going to work very constructively with the commission going forward.

Do you think it sets any dangerous precedents for the industry?
Ballmer: I'm not a sort of geopolitical strategist. I'm not going to sort of speculate what it might mean to others. I think I understand what it means to us, and we're moving forward.

One last thing. Does Microsoft have any interest in the enterprise software consolidation that's going on? Oracle said they want to buy BEA Systems. They've had a strategy of pretty much gobbling up lots of companies. Is that an area where you see Microsoft needing to acquire to grow?
Ballmer: I wouldn't see us buying some companies. But, you know, we continue to do acquisitions. Whether we'll do a large acquisition, I'm not so sure. You know, we've seen Business Objects and Hyperion and Siebel and some other things. In every case, we had a look and decided we liked where we were better than where we would have gotten. We're quite happy with our position.

What do you make of Oracle's growth strategy through acquisition?
Ballmer: I'm not an expert. If it works, power to them. It's tough, but sometimes big executions can make good sense. We'll have to see how they execute.

More Newsmakers

[rapier1]

Before anyone says anything

He did give Apple its props. He's not bashing the competitors and
admitting that they have some very worthwile tech. He's also
admitting that they have work to do. Its kind of nice to see
someone in that position being relatively honest about things
without dipping down into insults and vitriol.

Now, everyone here can commence with their insults and vitriol.

[menotbug]

Hide the chairs, Ballmer's on the loose

Hide the chairs, Ballmer's on the loose

[seahunt411]

Security worries??

Asking Steve Ballmer about security concerns?? How freaking hysterical. Perhaps Mr. Ballmer should see to cleaning up the code bloat and hardening Vista before making ANY comments on someone else's product. I wonder if Micro$ofts answer to the IPhone would take 2 minutes to boot up like their OS's.

[JCPayne]

NO THANKS. I'll save the BLUE SCREENS for my old

WINTEL PCs... Thank you very much... If Linux companies would do more user group studies they should be able to come out with some nice phones... Why doesn't RedHat get into the Mobile business too????