Compares Apples with Oranges – blows kisses at Nokia
Late last week, the phone rings.
“Hi Mobile Europe, it’s Windows Mobile here, we were just wondering, on the off chance, like, if you were planning any smartphone coverage at all next week? Because if you are, perhaps, say, in relation to Apple’s new phone, Scott Rockfeld would be really keen to give you an update on how he sees the smartphone market.”
“Oh right, that’s good. Yes. We’ll have a chat with Scott.”
<<Cut to Monday afternoon, BST. Sparrowfart, West Coast time>>
“Hi, Mobile Europe, it’s Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for the company's Mobile Communications Business, here.”
“Hi Scott. Thanks for the call, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, Mobile Europe, I wanted to draw your attention to a recent letter from our senior vp Andy Lees that congratulates our partners on their success to date. When you look at the numbers, you can see that Windows Mobile is outselling RIM over the last four quarters. And in the last quarter, for every customer picking an iPhone, three times the number bought a Windows Mobile phone.”
“Also, Mobile Europe, Apple is announcing a 3G phone and GPS, and the big thing is that they should have their SDK available for the first time. Well, Windows Mobile has 40 phones in the world with 3G, and almost the same number with GPS. And we have thousands of developers already developing in Windows Mobile. 70% of the developers in the world are developing for Windows, meaning htay can develop for Windows Mobile as well.”
“Right, Scott. Thanks for that. But is it not also the case that as recently as April you were stating you outsold Apple and Blackberry combined, and now you say only that you outsell each of them individually. Also, if you look at the market shares for smartphones, with Nokia, RIM and Apple in the 1, 2, 3, that’s already well over 50% of the market, all of it at the top end, that Microsoft will never be able to address?”
“Yes, but don’t forget that is comparing software with hardware – the story changes significantly when you look at the whole market.”
“Well, not really, I'm sizingthe addressable hardware market for your software. And, of course, you yourself explicitly compare hardware versus software when you make your own sales claims for Windows Mobile versus Apple and RIM.”
“IDC has said that we have grown our market share 13%. And the world smartphone market is growing between 10-30% year on year, with demand growing significantly. Our market share is growing.”
“OK. Can you tell me what lift to data ARPUs operators experience when their customers use Windows Mobile phones? Operators with iPhone customers have reported dramatic increase in data usage. What are the figures like for Windows Mobile phones?”
“I’m not sure that’s a discusssion we have with operators, and I haven’t seen the relevant numbers, so I can’t really answer that – but I’m sure it’s growing with the sales of our phones. I do know that the amount of money that Apple put behind the launch of the iPhone raised the awareness of what smartphones can do.”
“When we spoke to your colleague John Starweather in February, there was something of a hint that Microsoft would love to convert Nokia to a full Windows Mobile licensee. Is there any further news on that?”
“ There’s nothing to be announced today, and there are no plans I know of. But here’s a caveat – three years ago Palm didn’t have a Windows Mobile phone. Sony Ericsson had its existing relationship with Sony and no Windows Mobile phone. Nokia is an existing licensee of our ActivSync technology and we’d love them to go the whole way, but there’s no plans to date. One thing I do know, the one size fits all approach of Apple and RIM doesn’t suit the modern customer. These companies still say, ‘Come to us and we’ll tell you what you want. We say, ‘We will deliver one phone to suit your whole life, as you would like to be, whatever form factor, UI, and so on, you would like.”
"OK Scott, thanks for your time."