Bill Gates: Android Outperformed Windows Mobile in Crucial Motorola Deal
Windows Mobile had almost become the largest mobile operating system in the world, but Microsoft was distracted by the antitrust lawsuit and missed a deal with Motorola as a result. That’s what former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates claims.
This is what the Droid would have looked like with WP7
Gates says at the NYT DealBook Conference that Microsoft didn’t finish a new release on time. “We were three months late with a release that Motorola would have used on a phone. So yes, it’s a market where only the winner counts.”
The founder of Microsoft, at the time not a director but a software architect, probably refers to the Motorola Droid, claims The Verge. It came out ten years ago and was the first successful Android smartphone in the United States.
It is unknown which release Gates is talking about, but it is presumably Windows Phone 7. Microsoft announced it in February 2010, three months after the release of the Droid. Windows Mobile 6.5 came out before the release of the Droid, including on the HTC HD2 that came out at the same time.
Motorola was so influential because provider Verizon Wireless, then also the market leader, was looking for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone. At the time, it was only for sale at competitor AT&T. In 2008, that deal went to BlackBerry for the Storm, but that phone flopped. Verizon invested a lot of money in marketing the Droid and that’s why Android gained momentum as a counterpart to the iPhone, including the Android Market for apps. It’s now called the Play Store.
Windows Phone 7 came out in 2010, but partly because of that it was too late. Developers were already making apps for iOS and Android, and it turned out they didn’t want to support a third platform en masse. And without apps, Microsoft noticed, it was difficult to sell a phone with a certain operating system.
This isn’t the first time Gates has pointed to missing Motorola’s deal as his biggest mistake at Microsoft. He already did that in June. According to Gates, Microsoft was too distracted by the antitrust lawsuit against the company and therefore didn’t put the best people on creating the new mobile operating system. “We knew phones would be a big market and we could have done this,” Gates said.