I haven’t been posting links to all the apps for iOS that Microsoft has been releasing lately. I am sure these are decent apps and from what I hear there isn’t much complaining about their quality.
This alone is incredibly interesting to me — it should be to you too — but what’s more interesting is Microsoft iOS Apps in general.
So interesting that I wonder how someone got Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to approve of the move — especially at the level of commitment they seem to have towards churning out iOS apps.
It really is dumbfounding if you think about it.
Remember [Ballmer is the man that famously said in 2007](http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/04/30/ballmer.on.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.
It would seem Microsoft would avoid such a platform, but the next sentence from Ballmer is even more interesting in retrospect:
>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.
And here in 2011 his company is putting a real effort into creating quality apps for this platform that he thought would only have 2% or 3%. Perhaps having their software in 60-80% of smartphones really means not having Windows in those phones, but Microsoft apps?
That’s likely not what Ballmer was thinking when he made the statement, but it may well turn out to be the reality of Microsoft’s future.
All Microsoft needs is some better Android offerings.
If we go by a favorite saying of the tech web, that Office is far more important to Microsoft than Windows, would it not make sense then that 10 years from now Microsoft is just a really good “app” company?
That is, instead of making platforms (like Windows) they are just producing applications that run on the best platforms out there — regardless of who controls these platforms?
With Ballmer this won’t happen, but with fresh eyes this seems to be a pretty interesting strategy for a company that is struggling to get a foothold in the ever important mobile industry.
Of course this minimizes the sheer size of Windows itself, but then again I have to wonder just how important the traditional PC will be to the average consumer in a decade’s time.
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