Bill Gates: Cellphone will Beat iPod 1017
93,000 writes "CNN is running an article featuring Gates' prediction that the iPod is on the way out. From the article: 'As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run.' His prediction for a successor? Mobile phones-- powered by none other than Windows Mobile 5.0, of course."
Cell Phones over iPod? (Score:5, Interesting)
All powered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0.
Has anyone ever done any reseach on how often Bill Gates has been right in his predictions?
Moving target (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, as far as his bets on the future of the iPod, like just about everything else Apple has created and Microsoft has copied, the iPod is not stagnant. It's development is ongoing and dynamic, so Microsoft is going to have not not only copy, but out innovate a moving target.
Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows CE sucks goats balls through straws (Score:2, Interesting)
So much for software being easily updatable. You'd think we'd have progressed beyond having to rewire hardware to do a software update.
Summary: Windows CE = Shit
Mobile OSses (Score:2, Interesting)
Swiss army knife (Score:2, Interesting)
But in reality that is unlikely. Cameras will have a place in the market, regardless of advances of phonecam technology, because there will always be people, a whole lot of them actually, who would prefer an exclusive camera that doesn't disturb with phone calls while taking a picture. Similarly there will be people who would prefer an MP3 player that doesn't disturb their listening pleasure.
Re:He's Right (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple cell phones... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even with the cell phone I got, I had to turn everything off that I don't use and there are still some features that can "accidentally" turn on that obligates an additional charge on my bill. My cell phone provider is unhappy that I haven't changed my contract in six years the plan I started off with much more generous than the plans you have today. I always laugh when people tell me that they have 20 minutes left and 20 days until the next billing cycle.
Re:MS are desperately looking for a niche (Score:1, Interesting)
They are also doing well in the server market although people tend to ignore that.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at how much design work they've put into their products, you can't help feeling that at some point soon, they're going to end up with the ideal solution. And at about that point, you suddenly have a major problem; stagnation of the product range, or change for the sake of change.
The iMac is a good example; where exactly do you go from an all in one LCD? Same with the iPod. It plays music, and it plays it really well. How do you improve on it without making it more complex, or adding features some users would find redundant? Or do you simply make cosmetic changes now and again to keep it fresh?
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:3, Interesting)
first, Apple's been trying to get into the music phone business for a minute. they've developed something with Motorola and shopped it to domestic telecoms. The telecoms didn't want the equivalent of an IPOD phone because an IPOD phone with ITUNES cuts telecoms out of the revenue stream. telecoms instead have been looking to make direct deals with the record companies. so gates isn't innovating when he says this - he's just reading his APPLE rss feed.
that said, i think the ipod will be here for a while. quite frankly, it's because of the apparent inability tech companies have had in getting a convergence product right. Lets assume that product X is possible. how is it going to get decent battery time and still allow me to listen to music all day like i do now? So convergence has serious holes.
That said though, even Apple is looking for post-Pod solutions.
the other side of the argument is elementary. convergence is the f*cking dog's bollocks. One lightweight communications/web/multimedia device with decent battery time, without the strictures of an arthritis-inducing form factor... this is good. It doesn't exist, and the current attempts tend to put most people off convergence devices. I guess we'll have to see where that goes.
On the whole though, I think Gates is right. Jobs saw it way before he did though.
Re:It's coming. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all really going to come down to interface and battery life. If cell phone makers can cram all this functionality into phones without creating an unusable interface or sacraficing battery life then they may very well win the war. But it's really time to wait and see.
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone else... (Score:3, Interesting)
Were the GOOG guys to have put more of their stock on the market, or just look to get acquired, do you think they would have been able to find someone to buy them?
And as counterpoint, if Microsoft didn't have such a tough and well-rooted competitor in Linux which gave so much reliable functionality, do you think they would have been able to keep their community happy enough to make MSN effective at choking out their competition before it got as big as GOOG?
Gates' prediction that the Internet would be huge business was not wrong at all. What he was wrong about was Microsoft being able to dominate it as easily as they did the OS market earlier in his career.
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:3, Interesting)
What I want is:
- A PDA with a HARD DRIVE. Enough of this 'when your battery runs down, you lose everything' crap. That's the sort of thing I'd expect out of a cheap calculator watch, not something I pay hundreds of dollars for. Why should I have to sync daily to avoid losing data?
- An billfold with a built-in shuffle pocket.
- Wireless earbuds and a shuffle attachment w/ built-in rechargeable battery, all of which should fit in the shuffle pocket.
- A cell phone that holds numbers and synchronizes via bluetooth and DOES NOTHING ELSE.
- A cell phone whose UI doesn't look like it was designed by Microsoft's interns.
- A cell phone that gives reliable signal integrity even under heavy congestion (i.e. better use of bandwidth).
Maybe it's just me... but judging from comments here, I sort-of don't think so.Some questions for Mr. Gates:
- Who wants to bet that cell phone providers will be looking for a way to charge you a monthly fee for the "convenience" of using your cell phone as an iPod? Is there anything else even remotely useful that they haven't found a way to charge for?
- How much capacity can you reasonably fit into a phone?
- How are cell phone manufacturers going to reconcile the fact that cell phone electronics are typically monaural and of relatively poor sound quality?
- What sort of custom headset will you need to be able to listen to music in stereo and still have phone conversations? Am I going to have to carry around one headset for talking on the phone and a separate pair of earphones for when I listen to music?
- Why do technology companies keep trying to shove convergence down our throats when the majority of the primary market for geek toys (geeks, that is) thinks that converged devices inherently suck?
Just wondering.Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just the beginning of a move from Computers as Tools to Computers as Appliances... Consumer Electronics are going to get cooler and cooler just like they have been for the last twenty years, Apple just raised the bar a bit.
Re:Not everyone has (or wants) a cell phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe five years ago, when cell phone popularity was just building up, a woman came up to me on the street and asked me if I wanted a free phone. I told her that I wasn't interested. When she stopped looking at me as if I was mentally deficient, she asked me why.
I replied, "I just don't want to be that accessible. I don't even like to answer the phone when I'm home half the time."
She proceeded, for several seconds, to glare at me as if she had just met the most incomprehensibly retarded person that she had had the pleasure of encountering in her entire life.
She then gave me the spiel about how useful a cell phone would be if I was ever to find myself stranded on the side of the road, my car refusing to start, in the cold Canadian winter.
My response? "In the 22 years I've been alive, I've never found myself in that situation. Paying $20 or more a month to address the unlikelihood of it ever happening seems a little excessive."
She then got a cell phone call and ended the conversation.
Microsoft have been trying for years.. (Score:5, Interesting)
So who *is* actually building Windows phones in quantity? Well HP is.. a little tiny bit, but most of the world's Windows phones are manufacturerd by HTC [htc.com.tw] of Taiwan and then just rebadged. Sure.. HTC is doing well, and the HTC Universal [mobilegazette.com] certainly rocks.. when it eventually comes out. But for all the squillions that Microsoft has put into this project, they haven't seen an awful lot come out.
Oh yes.. the iPod. Well, on one part we have these "jack of all trades" devices that have a so-so camera, music player, phone and PDA built into one. There's a market for "unified devices". There's also a market for focussed devices that are of a better quality. There's a market for both. Don't forget that Microsoft has been failing to kill off Apple for over twenty years too..
Cell Phones (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the general consensus amoung you slashdotters here mainly stem from the fact that you're a little behind in cell-phone technology. Over here, cell phones are already starting to eat away at the portable music-player market (this is going strictly from what I see with my friends though, I doubt it'll turn up at market-analysises this soon).
Good music playing phones already exist, and why shouldn't they? Playing music is simple, calling is simple, using sms is simple. There is no general purpose interface, and none of the generalization problems PDA's end up with.
The real problem is the phone companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyhow, If this way of doing business continues with the phone companies, who in the world would ever use a phone as an MP3 player if you had to pay a monthly fee to use your MP3 player as apposed to freely transfering songs back and forth. I would just carry a second device.
There were rumors that Apple and Motorola had some sort of combo device coming, but the cell companies wouldn't sell it for their network because they didn't get a cut of the song profits.
So really, what Bill says really carries no weight, it is all about the pricing models the telecoms choose to use. Maybe Microsoft will subsudize the windows phone, but but I would still avoid it, just for the sake of keeping my gear free of viruses and BSODs.
Re:It's coming. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the crux of the convergence problem. Everyone wants something that does everything they could possibly want, but it must do it just as well as the standalone product and it must do it at or near the same price point.
--
Mando
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:2, Interesting)
Your PDA with a hard drive. looks sweet.
Already There with a Treo 600 (Score:5, Interesting)
The second thing I noticed in the article was this quote:
"The BlackBerry is great but we're bringing a new approach," he said. "With BlackBerry you need to link to a separate server, and that costs extra. With us, the e-mail function will already be part of the server software."
With Chatter, I get IMAP email pushed in real time to my treo.No extra server needed here either, just a _standard_ IMAP server which supports IDLE, and my treo can get email pushed to it in the background.
News Flash 2008 (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the first question asked at the introductory press release?
"Can it run Windows programs?"
Resist the Borg.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not on my side...
I flat out refuse to use ANY M$ based product.
Besides, I don't want all that crap. When I'm not at my desk, I'm doing something, driving, working, etc. I don't have time to screw around with a stupid device like this. Besides, I'm old and I can't deal with the "Nintendo thumbs" syndrome. I watched my kids operate those tiny little controllers and I hated the damn things. And doing that on a cell phone while I am trying to drive, that phone is going to get zinged out the window!
I want a phone that I can call people on, has a totally dependable battery, has a large send and hang up button, that I F--king can SEE in daylight (I hate my V120T) and get's a good signal everywhere. Screw games, music and text messages, screw notes and all the other nerd-bling.
I just want a phone that I can depend on when I need it and that everyone doesn't want to steal from me.
Exactly, streaming bandwidth changes everything. (Score:5, Interesting)
The one thing that will set a huge fire on wireless devices will be fast and very cheap networking. Hopefully WiFly will do it. But if not there's other possibilities. It's just a matter of time.
When it does arrive, say like 1Meg bidirectional for twenty bucks a month, everybody will have one and they'll just stream all of their media from their home PC.
But at that point the margins will be too low for either Apple or Microsoft. Instead, the handsets will probably have your telco's logo and be made by the zillion by Golden Gragon Ltd contract mega manufacturers, Shen Zhen China. They won't need more than a tiny bit of local storage since you'll keep everything at home. The rest of it wil just be a few chips and an antennae in a piece of plastic.
The best part is that they'll be all over India and Brazil and the Ukraine just as fast as they hit the US. Globalization isn't all bad.
Re:Not everyone has (or wants) a cell phone (Score:2, Interesting)
However, the real problem with not having a cell phone is that (in the US, anyway) everyone assumes you have a cell phone, and so fewer and fewer pay phones are available anymore. Your six odd years sans-breakdown aside (don't know the driving age in Canada), there *will* be times when you need to get in touch with someone.
For example, what if you find yourself trapped upside down in your car [thislife.org]?
iPod has one HUGE advantage over a cell phone (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not everyone has (or wants) a cell phone (Score:3, Interesting)
Just FYI, driving up here is like the states and decided provincially instead of federally, but typically the age is 16. Regardless, as I have been riding in cars my whole life and have never had one break down in the middle of nowhere before, I think it's safe to conclude that (now, five years after this conversation) 27 years of my life have elapsed without this being a significant event.
And while I recognize that cell phones *can* save lives, I think that the probability that they will save me during my lifetime is low enough that it doesn't offset the cost of the phone and service plan, and the irritation of carrying the thing around and charging the batteries.
Re:Exactly, streaming bandwidth changes everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Philips has signed an agreement with Microsoft to integrate Windows Media into its chip designs for set-top boxes, PVRs, HDTV, portable media players, cell phones, the works:
Philips, Microsoft Seal Software Deal [ecommercetimes.com]
I recently returned from Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I could see the PDA has disappeared in Japan. I saw two or three people using them on the subway and that was it. I couldn't find any Palms or PocketPCs on sale, even in Akibahara. I did find a few 4Gb Sharp Zauruses and lots of ebook/edictionary things. But otherwise no PDAs.
Phone use in Japan is unbelievable. Walking down the street you are faced with hordes of people all texting as they walk. Cellphones in use everywhere. Old people, young people, anyone. I have no idea what some of these people were doing. I assume they were all texting but when I looked over people's shoulders I often saw funky looking animations. It's clear that the convergence with the cellphone has already happened, at least in Japan.
Re:Design and Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe some people buy it based on marketing, but I'll bet damn few do. My experience has been that people don't drop several hundred dollars based on an ad. They see the ad, it gets them interested, but then they talk to friends and coworkers, and if they hear good things *then* they buy it. People buy iPods because iPod owners love the things and gush about them, not because of "hey, neat ad, I think I'll pay a few hundred bucks!".
The vast majority of anti-iPod posts focus on feature comparisons. The market has spoken quite loudly that people would rather have something that works and they enjoy using than get an extra feature or two.
Re:Design and Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Size: The Creative Zen Micro is 2" x 3.3" x 0.7", or 4.62 cubic inches, and weighs 3.8 ounces. The iPod Mini is 3.6 x 2.0 x 0.5, which is 3.6 cubic inches, and weighs 3.6 ounces. Now, I'm willing to argue that the size difference here is negligible, but you brought it up, not me.
Features: The Creative Zen Micro has a built-in FM radio and a voice recorder, as well as a removable battery. Your mileage may vary, but every review I've seen of *any* MP3 player with an FM radio says it's crap as you can't put a decent antenna in that size player. This is a shame, as I'd personally love to have one. As for the voice recorder, if you want it on the iPod mini, you can buy a third party one. Now, the iPod Mini of course features iTunes compatibility, the click-wheel, and a VAST array of third party add ons. You may not care about these things, but I may not care about your features above. To each their own.
Design: The sheer fact that you think *color* is a part of design; well, I don't even know where to start, I really don't. Any discussion of HCI would be completely lost on you. Read about a billion different articles and blogs on it - I don't have the time.
Re:That's the beauty of their success (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Apple, but their products are too expensive.
Talk to an economist about the current pricing strategies at Apple. They'll tell you Apple is using smart pricing. If you are producing at 100% of your capacity and you are selling everything you make, then your MBAs will tell you that your prices are too low. Raise prices until sales drop to just below your peak production capacity.
As proof, Apple created and dominated the hard-drive MP3 player market in short order with the iPod at the price they chose. Maybe you don't own one, but millions of other people do. You are in the margin of consumers who rejected their pricing and I think Apple is fine with that because this margin represents a smaller loss in potential profit than if they lowered prices to convert you to a customer and then those other millions of sales would have netted a smaller revenue. I know that was a monstorously run-on sentence-- please forgive my inability to communicate this concept. I'm listening to my iPod while I type this.
seth
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:40 Gigs of Ring Tones (Score:3, Interesting)
Admittedly, both devices I own are relatively old. However, this same thing happened to someone I know with a very recent (rechargeable) Palm model, so I'm not out to lunch here. Maybe other (non-Palm) PDAs suck less. I'd love to hear any suggestions in this matter.
With respect to your comment about reconciling stereo/mono, I didn't mean it was difficult from a technical perspective. I built more complicated audio hardware back in junior high school. The problem is how competitive the cell phone marked is in terms of pricing. It is primarily commodity hardware, not feature-driven hardware. The lowest price wins for probably 90% of the market.
And it's not just DACs, either. In fact, that's probably the least significant part of the signal chain. It takes a -lot- more amplifier power to drive a decent set of headphones at good enough quality for music than to drive a little ear-bud headset for a phone call. Don't have enough wattage? Sorry, no bass response for you. Have enough wattage? Better get used to charging the battery....
And the headphones are also significant. Most people listening to music demand a certain quality---far better than a headset for talking on the phone. But many will want to also be able to use a headset to talk on the phone. So the question becomes whether to try to unify these two pieces, and if so, how to do it.
Do you:
- insist that their nice headphones can only be used for music and they must carry a separate headset w/ mic for phone calls? How is this solving the "I want my music player to always be in my pocket" problem, again?
- provide a clip-on mic that clips onto existing headphones, but adds a second wire to get caught on things?
- try to convince headset manufacturers to start building stereo headsets with mics? Will the quality be good enough for listening to music?
To make a long story short, telephones and music players are very different technologies, and integrating them in a usable way is a lot harder than it sounds. It's not an insignificant change in hardware here. This is akin to adding a TV set into an existing wristwatch design and assuming that because they both display things, it can't be too hard.... Yes, it's technically possible. No, it won't cost $9.95.I'm not saying it can't be done, and I'm not saying that nobody will do a good job. I am saying that I'll believe it when I see it. :-)
BillG's predictions (Score:4, Interesting)
BillG does not make predictions in order to predict the future - he makes predictions to advance the fortunes of his company.
If you look at his predictions from the point of view "What is the best thing i can say to advance Microsofts fortunes" you will see that he is 100% spot on there every time. His publicity helps Microsoft, which, in turn, bolsters his very own bank account.
MSFT is up by 0.36% today, whereas AAPL is down over 4%. Go figure.