The Big Picture: Gates says the Direction Microsoft took in Smartphones "Clearly a Mistake"

In an interview on CBS This Morning, Mircosoft Co-Founder and Chairman Bill Gates commented briefly on the state of his company since he stepped down as CEO nearly five years ago. Gates was not overly critical of current CEO, Steve Ballmer, but rather suggested that neither of them were happy with Microsoft's current 2.4 percent stake in the mobile market. Mr. Gates lauded Ballmer for getting "a lot of amazing things done" in his time at the software giant, including Bing, the Surface tablet, Xbox, and Windows 8, which Gates said "is the key to the future".

Gates went on to say that he and Ballmer are "two of the most self critical people (that) you can imagine" and that "We didn't miss cell phones, but the way we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership. So it's clearly a mistake." Hopefully this indicates that Microsoft is working to reform it's somewhat lack-luster image in the mobile market and will strive to be more innovative in the year ahead.

Also in the news today, China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world's leader consumer of Smart Devices by months end. New date suggest that the Chinese people will be using an estimated 246 million active Android and iOS devices by the end of February to the U.S.'s 230 million. With the vast differances in population (China has approx. 1.3 Billion citizens to the U.S.'s approx 310 million) it is unlikely that the U.S. will overtake China again in mobile use. India (approx. 1.2 Billion citizens) is the only country that may every overtake China in the mobile market.


Sources: CBS News, CNET