Microsoft founder Gates says Microsoft not behind

Microsoft co-creator Bill Gates in an interview with the BBC's Hard Talk [excerpts below] took issue with notions that Microsoft was trailing in the mobile space. He "wouldn't say that" the Windows developer had been left behind and said mostly that competitors, implicitly Apple and Google, had mainly done "very good work" in that area. The former CEO argued that Microsoft, while it hadn't executed on its vision, had even been prescient in believing that software would define the phone.

"Look at three or four years ago, Microsoft was saying the phone would become software-centric," Gates argued. "Software approaches are succeeding there. Microsoft has to create the best device for those scenarios."

Asked about increasing claims by Apple chief Steve Jobs and even former Microsoft staff of a post-PC world, Gates did see the field changing. The PC was fusing with phones, tablets, and other categories and would be alive even as its traditional form was less relevant. "The PC is the tablet," he said.

When touching on Microsoft's buyout of Skype, he revealed that he had been a "strong proponent" of the deal and thought it was mutually beneficial. He didn't address talk that he had a stake in Skype that gave him a financial incentive for a Microsoft-Skype deal.

Gates has had a reputation as being forward-thinking but has had a poor historical record of adapting to the mobile space, particularly in tablets. His personal insistence that tablets needed to be full PCs with pen input is now widely credited with marginalizing the concept until the iPad arrived and outsold all Windows Tablet PC models ever made in nine months. Before the iPad launch, he openly dismissed the device because it lacked a pen and believed a tablet needed one to be widely accepted.

Smartphones have been gentler to Microsoft but have still seen its share sink to just a few percent where Android and iPhone have eclipsed it for years. Windows Phone 7 has seen Microsoft's software expertise reemerge but was delayed after a complete remake and has yet to catch on. [via WinRumors]

By Electronista Staff