Below is a video of Steve Ballmer’s reaction to the iPhone sometime back in 2007. Below that is a link to an article from December 2008 where the iPhone, eclipsed the marketshare of ALL Windows mobile phones combined. I’m not here to crap on Microsoft’s products. Windows 7 is sweet, the Zune HD looks nice and the Xbox 360 is a great device with terrible hardware. Microsoft is rarely the innovator but they generally make a nice follow-up product based on something already available. Nothing wrong with that, I mean the iPod was not the first MP3 player.
The point I want to make is this, why does Steve Ballmer continually say stupid things instead of just tending to Microsoft’s business. He laughed at the iPhone…now look. He said he was going to destroy Google and was rumored to have thrown office furniture during the tirade but Google still owns search and is chipping away at Office, Sharepoint and Exchange. Ballmer has clearly made some good decisions as head of Microsoft. He’s trying to revamp their image with new projects and I honestly have no problem with that. My problem is that Ballmer is the type of guy that says, “it’ll never work” or “that’s a dumb idea” and sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s wrong…I mean really wrong. By being dismissive of the competition he is making a big mistake in not being able to authentically learn from them.
Imagine if his approach about the iPhone was like this instead:
“The iPhone looks like a great device and if it looks like customers are looking for a media playing phone with a touch screen, we’ll look into that and try to beat Apple at their own game.”
Imagine if instead of trying to “destroy Google” and making snide remarks that they only have one product in advertising, what if instead he said:
“Google is clearly the 200 pound Gorilla of search, but don’t count us out, we haven’t gotten it right yet but we’re watching and we’re learning and we’re going to take our team of great engineers and we’re going to give Google a run for their money”
Steve Ballmer isn’t a total idiot, he’s just a PR nightmare. Microsoft has plenty of resources to throw at any project they want but Ballmer needs to stop declaring them the winner before the fight has begun. Even though these companies are competitors, it doesn’t help him any to degrade them, it simply further polarizes people. For instance, I love Apple products and Google products. I may be very open to trying new products but I like my Apple stuff. By Ballmer crapping on my choice, which I’m very happy with, he isolates me from their product. Instead of degrading the opposition, talk about the value you bring because that’s what we care about in the end anyway.