Steve Ballmer famously once said about the iPhone:
There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. 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 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.
His forecast couldn’t have been more wrong.
Now we get to see Apple returning the favor after Microsoft’s new Surface Book was released:
From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable. iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don’t have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little ‘close’ boxes that you can’t hit with your finger.
There’s a chance that this may turn out to be true. But the essence of the quote is no different than Ballmer’s. It’s a straight dismissal of an idea simply because it doesn’t match the current business model of the company. Business models need to change over time.
Is this where Apple begins to start stumbling?