Ballmer: ‘Apple Sold More iPads Than I’d Like Them to Sell’
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave Apple a left-handed compliment Thursday, telling analysts the Cupertino, Calif company has “sold more than I’d like them to sell. We think about that.”
But Ballmer, who in 2009 infamously described Apple increasing Mac sales as a “rounding error” implied there is room for more players in the tablet market. Referring to the iPad, the Microsoft executive said “I don’t think there is one size fits all,” according to a transcript by Business Insider. “I’ve been to too many meetings with journalists who spent the first 10 minutes of the meetings setting up iPad to look like a laptop,” he added.
And just where is Microsoft when it comes to tablets? “We’re invested in touch, in ink. Mark up annotation, you see us try to bring it together to deliver slates and convertibles people will be exited about,” Ballmer said. A tablet “has job one urgency aound here, nobody’s sleeping at this point,” the exec said.
Is there a timeline? The software giant which recently canceled its Courier tablet could only promise it “will be shipping as as soon as they are ready.”
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
