Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer snuck into Adobe to talk with their CEO, Shantanu Narayen, about how they could team up, cartoon villain-style, to take on the growing mobile power of Apple and one Steven P. Jobs. the NYT Bits blog says:

The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could team up in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.

One person familiar with the discussion said the two companies had talked about the blockade that Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, had placed on Adobe’s Flash software for its hand-held devices and whether a partnership by Adobe and Microsoft could fend off Apple, which continues to grow at juggernaut speeds.

Crazier things have happened in tech, so let us know what you think. Would Microdobe (Adobesoft?) pose a larger threat to Apple than either currently does alone? Could we see an Flash Phone 7? CS5 Office Suite? And how will previous Adobe best-fremeny Google feel about being left to third wheel this little Legion of Doom?

[NYT Bits Blog]

An analyst has let fly that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will be getting 7 minutes of time during the WWDC 2010 keynote — where the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G will al but certainly be introduced — to announce Visual Studio 2010 will support the native creation of iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. Is there a word in the English language for something so bat$#!t crazy “rumor” and even “fiction” just don’t properly convey its bat$#!t craziness?

What makes this particular type of bat$#!t craziness so crazy is that it comes on the wake of Apple disallowing Adobe Flash CS5-style cross-compilation for development, Google’s awkwardly aggressive and increasing attacks on Apple, and Microsoft’s shakeup of their own devices division — triple trendy tie-in.

Hey, Microsoft and Apple have come to deals on Office and ActiveSync in the past, and we keep hearing about Bing being on the table to replace Google as default search…

So will Ballmer take the stage and monkey-boy dance out to iPhone developers, developers, developers!? Will Windows PCs get a way in to Apple app creation? Will I ever use bat$#!t insane in a post this much again?

UPDATE: We re-tweeted this earlier but just to make it absolutely clear, the official @Microsoft Twitter account laid this bat$3!t crazy rumor to rest earlier today:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

We’re only missing out if he’d have danced.

[Barons via DF]

Much to the chagrin of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Devices and Entertainment honcho Robbie Bach, the Wall Street Journal reports that even publicly stomping on employee iPhones hasn’t stamped them out:

Nearly 10,000 iPhone users were accessing the Microsoft employee email system last year, say two people who heard the estimates from senior Microsoft executives. That figure equals about 10% of the company’s global work force.

Outside of specific development units like Bing for iPhone, while using an iPhone at Microsoft isn’t forbidden, it’s discouraged. Microsoft will only re-emburse expenses for Windows Phone-based devices. Likewise, several executives have spoken out against using iPhones, including Ballmer who quipped that his father worked at Ford and so his family always drove Ford.

While a few use the openly, others hide them in generic cases — or make sure not to answer them if they’re in a room with Ballmer. (Or use them if they’re a member of the Gates family!)

Apple employees, of course, are not thought to be using Windows Mobile devices in any perceptible quantity. Could Windows Phone 7 Series change that…?

Given the rumors surrounding Apple and Google lately, and the iPhone and Microsoft Bing, it’s no wonder Mobile World Congress 2010 has raised both topics again, earning a smile from Steve Ballmer, and yet another “stable” comment from Google.

First up, Reuters has comments from Vic Gundotra, Google mobile engineering lead:

“Apple is a very close and valuable partner and we’re very excited about the relationship we have with them today. We have no reason to believe that’s going to change.” [...] “We don’t want to comment on those rumours. We think that relationship is stable.”

“Stable” being the same word repeated twice by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt recently when he was similarly asked about the state of the Apple/Google relationship.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer played things more coyly according to Reuters:

When asked about the reports, Ballmer said “I wouldn’t comment either way,” but smiled, and repeated the phrase when the reporter remarked that Ballmer looked happy.

This once again highlights the broad but internally conflicted scope of Microsoft and Google’s businesses. Ballmer and Schmidt no doubt want WinPho7s and Android to compete well against the iPhone, but they both also want the revenue from iPhone search traffic — something Google reportedly pays $100 million a year for already.

UPDATE: According to WMExperts liveblog, it was a Tablet PC by HP running Windows 7 and called — wait for it — the HP Slate. Yes, named after Apple’s latest tablet name rumor. Looks chunky, and its using a desktop OS. Okay.

ORIGINAL: So the rumor is Steve is about to introduce a new tablet device — no, not Steve Jobs of Apple, but his nemesis Steve Ballmer of Microsoft — and he’s rumored to be doing it tonight at CES!

Our sibling site, WMExperts, has the details and Dieter and Phil will be there live covering Ballmer’s keynote at 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT, 2:30am GT (tomorrow morning, yeah?)

Will it be the crazy courier concept we saw before? More Tablet PC tomfoolery? Surface-to-go? And if Apple is unicorns, is this the pegasus?

And does this have any effect on Apple’s rumored iTablet show on Jan. 27? Or does Apple just ignore what everyone else is doing, as usual, and show up with what they got?

Steve Ballmer, whose company produced the single most internet-hostile program in history — Internet Explorer 6 — has the stupefying temerity to state:

Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications – they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.

Okay, Granted, Ballmer is likely looking at that Internet through a “compatibility-mode” colored screen, locked into SilverLight or ActiveX plugins, with ill-rendered box models and complete lack of support for anything approaching modern HTML5, and CSS support, so he probably doesn’t notice that stuff actually rendered using Web standards (Wikipedia it, Steve!) looks just fine on the iPhone.

Since Windows Mobile 6.5, brand new in 2009, uses Internet Explorer 6′s previous-century rendering engine (spare us the — it’s not the same as desktop IE6 — a poor browser by any other name hurts the web as badly), and Outlook 2010 (!) is transitioning to Word as its HTML email renderer (?!) we’re sure he has no clue what the internet is supposed to look like anyway.

But still, even for Ballmer, this is one ham fisted quote. The reason the iPhone has 85,000 apps is because it’s a modern, highly usable mobile device that developers want to develop for.

(For the record, what became the modern Web was designed on NeXT, the precursor to Apple’s OS X, the mobile version of which powers the iPhone, with computing power and screen real-estate we’re guessing might just be competitive with desktop power a couple decades old. B’okay Steve?)

[AP via Business Insider via Gizmodo]

As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was taking the stage for a private company meeting at Seattle’s Safeco Field, he saw an employee about to snap his picture with… an iPhone. So, Ballmer decided to snap instead. TechFlash (via Engadget) reports he grabbed the iPhone from the hapless employee, began making “funny comments”, put the iPhone on the floor and pretended to stamp on it, and then continued on, only to remind the employee he hadn’t forgotten about him later.

Maybe Ballmer should just forbid iPhones at Microsoft the way Bill Gates forbids them at home? Or, you know, get Windows Mobile back in order and make a phone so good no one at Microsoft would want to use anything else?

Of course, if it had been an Apple event, and Steve Jobs had caught one of his employees rocking an Windows Mobile device, no doubt Jobs eyes would have glowed and Omega Beams would have shot out and fried the poor soul on the spot.

(Yeah, we know Apple Store employees all use Windows CE devices to process credit card transactions, shhhh!).

I forget if this brings us 4 minutes to midnight or only 5 on the official app-ocalypse clock, but duck and cover because Windows 95 has been ported to run on an iPhone.

Ish. Gizmodo, via GoodiPhone, has the deets:

The hack makes use of a standard Windows 95 image and the Bochs emulator, though as you can expect, the performance is thoroughly crummy. They’re working on getting Windows XP to work too. An abomination, I say.

So say we all.

But hey, at least it wasn’t Windows ME…

We have to wonder if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has some insidious plot to make his PR people pull their hair out, so they’ll look just as Fester’ian as he himself. Or maybe he’s just jealous of the love TiPb’s been giving Palm’s Roger McNamee lately? How else can you account for the glorious (for bloggers!) content he keeps spewing in our general direction?

What now? From the man who once said the iPhone would be the most expensive phone on the planet (guess he didn’t see the Windows Mobile Xperia X1a going for $800…), now comes the following, courtesy of WMExperts:

“Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. [The] way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.”

Bu-bu-bu-but…! We thought WinPho was all about choice? Shouldn’t manufacturers like HTC, who’ve made capacitive touch screen devices like the Android G1 (which is hardly that expensive!) have the choice to offer WinPho devices with capacitive touch?

So not only does Ballmer try to spin Microsoft’s abject failure to deliver on capacitive touch 2 years after Apple (and months after Android and even BlackBerry) as a cost saving feature, but for extra bonus bluster, claims Apple is “driving cost” on the $199 iPhone?

Next time, stick to dancing…

TiPb. Heart. Steve. Ballmer. Microsoft’s #2 has really become #1 in our CEOh-Snap department. See, he doesn’t just hit the mic, he pummels it to bloody, infuriating, borderline committable pulp. This time, however, D|All Things Digital brings us a little CEOh-Snap back in the form of Ballmer being on the receiving end for once, via an unhappy questioner at the CIO Summit:

“With platforms like the Google phone and iPhone coming out, it’s really tough to continue to stand behind Windows Mobile when our employees are bringing these consumer devices into our environments,” the questioner explained. “And in your presentation you put Windows Mobile right in the center there, but it was a phone that doesn’t work in America and an operating system that you haven’t released. I’m wondering what your commitment is to continuing to get newer versions of the operating system in our hands so that we don’t have to fight this battle on the ground.”

Ballmer’s come back? WinPho 6.5 this year is significant but not everything they want for higher-end phones; that’ll come next year(!) with WinPho 7. Microsoft is accelerating their efforts, and people still bought more Windows Mobile devices than iPhone last year anyway, so: nyah!

(Though we’d remind Mr. Ballmer that Apple’s international roll-out really only began in July 2008, more than half-way through the year, and he’s welcome to check the sales numbers for Q3 2008 to see how that worked out for everyone…)

Microsoft PR must hate it every single time CEO Steve Ballmer gets on a mic. Bloggers on the other hand…? From the latest analyst briefing:

“The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android.”

Um.. Apple and BlackBerry manufacture their own devices there Steve, so while their internal momentum is enough to steamroll an industry, ODM’s can’t get their hands on iPhone OS X or RIM’s OS no matter how badly they probably want to.

Apple Insider rightly points out, of course, that this is the same line Microsoft used about the iPod when promoting their own PlaysForSure DRM platform (which later became closer akin to PlaysNoMore).

Check out Apple Insider‘s full coverage to get Ballmer’s views on Apple’s Mac, Google, Android on Netbooks vs. Windows 7, and how Microsoft could be like RCA! (?!)

Microsoft CEO and current CES Keynoter Steve Ballmer, prior to the original iPhone 2G’s launch, had quite a bit to say:

“You can get a Motorola Q for $99. [...] [Apple] will have the most expensive phone, by far, in the marketplace.” [...] “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Flash forward 2 years, where Apple’s $199 iPhone was the best selling smartphone — and all around phone — in the late-summer quarter, and the cost of unlocked Windows Mobile handsets like the Xperia X1a rocketed past the $800 price point, and what does everyone’s favorite internet dance sensation have to say? According to the Financial Times (Registration annoyingly required, text via Ars Technica):

Ballmer conceded that Apple’s iPhone (and RIM’s BlackBerry) have “clear market momentum.” Indeed, Windows Mobile has suffered in the face of strong competition from RIM and Apple.

TiPb isn’t the only Smartphone Experts site working our tails off this week. Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn is pulling the live-blogging trifecta, going straight from Macworld to cover Steve Ballmer’s CES kickoff tonight at 6pm PST for WMExperts AND for the (very much anticipated) debut of Palm’s next generation NOVA hardware and OS for TreoCentral — not to mention everything AndroidCentral. Never to be out done, CrackBerry Kevin (with a full on CrackBerry Crew!) will push any and all BlackBerry news they get their cracky hands on. Check out all our sites throughout the day for the latest, greatest, most Smartphone-geeky coverage.

Another analyst deflating missive from everyone’s favorite mythical Mac pundit, the Macalope. This time, the horny headed one explains why there’s no Flash or Java on the iPhone:

Uh, because they blow?

There’s more to it than that, of course:

And here we have the real issue. Sure, the iPhone could run Flash, but — particularly given the already unoptimized state of Flash on OS X — it would probably have to run some stripped-down, crappier version of Flash.

For the full story behind the various procs and cons, check out the full article, and also take a look at the Macalope’s weekly column for the latest Windows Mobile CES news — which makes TiPb wonder if Ballmer is picking his code names from Lady Marmalade these days…

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!… Judges Round!

Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no’s of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it’s time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Ed Colligan:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Daily Double-Talk

Steve Ballmer:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Final Jeopardy!

“Mike Lazaridis”:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

And to top it all off:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Judges?

10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who’s also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er… Anyone heard from Palm lately?

And the Winner Is!

None of the players today.

For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball’s awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew’s Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.

Taking a break from not buying Yahoo! and single-handidly driving the internet Monkey Boy dance phenomena, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer decided to throw a little advice Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ way: Break up the iPhone! (Please!)

Right now, of course, Apple tightly integrates both the iPhone hardware and software, just like they do with the Mac. This gives them unrivaled fit and finish and ensures developers (and consumers) a unified platform, end to end. It also ensures Apple — who makes their money on hardware, not software — very good margins and, thus far, very profitable business.

Enter Steve Ballmer’s plea, according to Ars Technica:

[Ballmer]‘s expecting Apple to do poorly in both the smartphone and notebook markets over the next five years, mostly because the company continues to stand by its rather un-Microsoft-like integration of both proprietary software and proprietary hardware.

For the full video interview, see ZDnet.

For a reality check, see how the current iPhone model has rejuvenated an industry and led to a bevy of iClones, while Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 has been pushed back to 2009, meaning we won’t even begin to see a 2007 iPhone competitive device running anything Microsoft until 2010…

So, yeah, we’re sure Jobs will get right on that…

But what do you think? Should Apple scrap the iPhone model and go the Microsoft route?

Microsoft’s most recent 10K filing with the SEC gives every indication you-know-who may be bringing them some future pain:

A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls both the software and hardware elements of a product, has been successful with certain consumer products such as personal computers, mobile phones and digital music players

Sure, Microsoft has their Xbox and Zune end-to-end business models, the former of which has enjoyed both success and red-ring framed troubles, and the latter of which is jettisoning even its… er… more eccentric fanbase, but they’ve yet to enjoy iPod-level triumph in the space.

To put this in some perspective, we know Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, has said Apple’s tight integration is something they want to emulate going forward, but Microsoft basically invented software as the mega-business. They’ve made gatestillions of dollars on software and enjoy a monopoly level position in both PC OS and Office applications.

So, even as Apple sold a million iPhone 3Gs in a weekend, and Steve Jobs wants 1% of the global mobile market, and 10 million units shipped short term, Microsoft came close to moving 20 million software licenses for Windows Mobile in the last year, and even as Mac sales keep inching on up, Microsoft still sits so far atop that market share mountain, its basically everest.

Still, if we discount Microsoft’s endemic — and groundless — Apple (and now Google) envy, could Ballmer and co. seriously still see Apple’s 360 degree, spherically integrated business model as a threat? And if so, why?

Posted from my iPhone

Never have I seen a thousand pound gorilla play such defense:

Apple: In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.

Seriously, Microsoft? Seriously? You pretty much invented the software industry and helped commoditize the PC business to an extent that Windows runs on an amount of servers, desktops, laptops, and — yes — even handsets, so vast it blots out the stars, and you’re re-focusing your business model on being more like Apple?

Seriously?

Now, I love Apple. My server, desktop, laptop, and handset were all designed in Cupertino, and their market share may one day approach 10%… but that’s the thing. 10%. (Not counting iPod here because, try as it might, Zune isn’t even really in that business).

You’re the gourmet restaurant on one side of the street or you’re the dozens of McDonalds on the other. Try to build your fine+fast eatery in the middle and… you get rammed by the oncoming bus (or Gordon Ramsey, whichever gets there first).

Instead of obsessing over Apple (and Google), how about spending some time on Microsoft. Your branding is a mess (8 word product names with inconsistent and seemingly random uses of Windows and LIVE! may work for puzzle games, but not consumer interest), your SKU’s are terminally skewed, and you’re increasingly at cross-purposes between partner platforms and in-house “whole widget” approaches. Heck, you’re making Yahoo! seem focused right now.

Head on over to WMExperts for more complete coverage and analysis. And to find out if Dieter somehow works ZOMG! Zune Phone… er… zPhone… er… xPhone… er… Phone for Windows LIVE! into the post…  

We just finished watching the day 1 keynote by Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO), and Dieter has posted the details up on WMExperts.com. It was a fair keynote; Ballmer was better in person than I thought he would be. His stage voice and personality are both ridiculously brash.

He had a lot to say about Windows Mobile, this of course being a mobile conference. He didn’t have a lot to say in regards to competition with the iPhone. Windows Live Search, Microsoft’s one-stop app for personal searches, crashed on stage. The presenter handled it quite well, there will be no horror stories of 5 minute waits for devices to reboot, etc.

The biggest news of his keynote is that Microsoft is bringing all of the parts of Windows Mobile phones further into their domain network structure. Windows Mobile devices will be further managed by the network administrators. They can push applications out, settings, practically the entire phone experience. It looks like it will be quite popular with the enterprise; but not by any means at the cost of the iPhone. No, this isn’t a shot across the iPhone’s bow. It’s a direct hit on Blackberry. I’ve said over and over in our Treocast podcasts that RiM plays a very dangerous game in the mobile space — they compete directly with Microsoft, and their job just got a lot harder.

It’s curious to me that Ballmer never really even mentions Google. Thinly-veiled insults are hurled their way a fair amount by both Ballmer and former Seahawks player / former U.S. Representative / current CTIA president Steve Largent, but Microsoft curiously has the decency to mention Yahoo!. Anyway, we’re off to the show floor. I’ll be posting more later.

Update:Macworld.co.uk seems to assert Microsoft only has about 5.6% of the mobile market. This puts another quote of his in perspective — “Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market?” He doesn’t have 96% of the market, not in this segment anyway. He’s sweating bullets in this market segment.

In other news, he promised to not release a Zune with phone features, stating “It’s not a concept you’ll ever get from us.” I’m not sure I believe him — if Linux phones really have 3 times more market share than Windows Mobile, I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a team on it already.

Technorati Tags: Ballmer, editorial, Microsoft, news, Zune