Bill Gates acknowledged mistakes that sounded Microsoft's death knell in the market that promised the strongest expansion.
Bill Gates is undoubtedly one of the men who have left their mark on the history of digital technology. A true precursor, he is now very (very) rich and plays philanthropist. But that doesn't mean he has no regrets. He had already expressed himself at length in the past on the fatal combination "ctrl + alt + suppr", which is a real nightmare according to him. In an interview with Village Global, however, he admitted that his biggest mistake was quite different, and related to the mobile OS system. We'll explain it to you.
Bill Gates and Microsoft beaten by Android
The Microsoft co-founder acknowledged that being beaten by Android was his "biggest mistake".
The Microsoft co-founder acknowledged that being beaten by Android was his "biggest mistake".
In the world of software, especially for platforms, these are markets where the winner wins everything (winner-takes-all). The biggest mistake of my life is the mismanagement I got myself into that prevented Microsoft from becoming what Android is. In other words, Android is the standard non-Apple telephone platform. It was a natural thing for Microsoft to win. It's really the winner who takes everything. If you have half as many applications or 90% of applications, you are about to finish. There is room for exactly one operating system other than Apple and what is its value? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G to company M
As a reminder, Google bought Android in 2005 for $50 million. At the time, Eric Schmidt himself admitted that it was a question of beating Windows Mobile, on which Microsoft was launching itself.
However, this confession by Bill Gates is surprising since specialists attribute this error to Steve Ballmer, who had made fun of the iPhone because he didn't have a keyboard. In any case, Microsoft wasted a lot of time then defining an effective strategy, until it focused on Windows Phone. Without being successful....