Spoken Like a True Self-Deluded CEO
by eldavojohn (898314)
[Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:]

'No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo. Credit that to Steve (Jobs) and Apple. They did a nice job. But it's not like we're at the end of the line of innovation that's going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I'll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune.'

Translation:

It's obviously expensive, that's bad. They will make more money than us ... someway I don't understand. We have a mobile operating system and are fairly successful in pushing it into mobile devices. I'll leave out how much just our software raises the price of a mobile device ... because it's probably pretty significant $50-$100. We dropped the ball on music and we're currently dropping the ball on a billion phone sales by making them more expensive without providing the customer with the strange benefits I don't understand but Steve Jobs thinks is obvious. I'm sure Microsoft will come out ahead here. Oh, and I can't wait until my uncle squirts Tom Dooley by The Kingston Trio all over me. We're smart, we chose to target the old people who buy and return a single piece of fruit and are electronically hip and are retiring as opposed to the foolish spending youths of today--why do you think we colored it brown?!

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