Ballmer: how Windows can capture smartphone middle ground
Tech Industry
-What's the Windows strategy in this?
-Well, I think both guys obviously have done a great job and, you know, we need to stake out a position through 2 or 3 different things.
Number 1, the ecosystem of Android is a little bit wild, relative, that is from an app compatibility perspective, a malware perspective.
It is maybe in a
way that's not always in the consumer's best interest.
It is uncontrolled.
Conversely, the Apple ecosystem looks highly controlled and by the way quite high-priced.
The fact that we live in a country where almost every phone is subsidized, you may forget it.
I was in Russia last week.
We pay 1,000 dollars for an iPhone.
You're not gonna sell that many iPhones relatively in Russia.
So the question is how do you get the quality, but maybe not at the premium price with a controlled, but maybe not quite as controlled
ecosystem and yet how do you allow for some of the lower priced points more affordability, diversity that comes with Android?
And I think you could say that's kind of the best of both worlds, and I think that's available to us.