Because of it, Microsoft lost 400 billion dollars in profit.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, speaking at a Village Global event, called the failure of the mobile OS market his biggest career mistake. He believes it paved the way for Google's Android to become the dominant platform among non-Apple platforms.
In the software world, especially in platform markets, the principle of «winner takes all» applies. The biggest mistake of my career was the mismanagement that allowed Microsoft to take the position that Android now occupies. Gates has calculated that if his company had taken even second place in the world of mobile OS, it could have claimed a piece of the $400 billion pie. But all of that profit went to Google.
Apple's iPhone debuted in June 2007. Android-based devices followed in September 2008. Microsoft only entered the smartphone arena with Windows Phone in October 2010. At that time, the mobile OS market was almost completely occupied, and Android and iOS together occupied 99.9%, writes GizmoChina.
The businessman admitted that it was this delay that played a decisive role in the failure:
If you have half as many programs or 90% fewer programs, you are on the path to complete destruction.
Android co-founder Rich Miner has already responded to Bill Gates' words. He emphasized that he deliberately participated in the creation of the operating system to prevent Microsoft from dominating the phone market, as it was then with PCs. Thus, we can say that Microsoft, albeit indirectly, played a role in the emergence of Android.