Windows Mobile "doing better than iPhone"

Get your Apples and oranges correct. Your "latest figures" link points to *browsing* market share statistics, not mobile OS deployment--indicating that iPhone users probably just surf the web more often. Even without including lifetime sales, Windows Mobile was only surpassed in quarterly sales by the iPhone in Q4 2008, and Microsoft still sold more WM licenses in 2008 than iPhones have been sold total.

So there is some truth to Ballmer's statement, even if his conclusions about the future may be stretching it. Just stop pointing to irrelevant statistics.

I cannot understand why people are so obsessed with accessing the web from their tiny little phones. I love my HTC Touch and I have used an iPhone and there is no real desire to use the web on either device except for only the simplest things.

As for who is beating whom? MS sold about 11 million device licenses in the 06/07 fiscal year. 11 MILLION!!! Apple sold 13 million 2g and 3g units in 1.5 years. That is only 8.67 million per year.

Is that an impressive jump into the market? Absolutely. But does it mean that MS is toast? No Way!!! WinMo may carry some traditional "windows" issues but it is far more flexible for the developers than the iPhone and it also allows the hardware to be designed in multiple ways.

MS has always tried to be all things to all people. Apple TELLS people how it will be and hopes that people like to be told what to do. Apple lost the PC war so they are 0 for 1 in the first major round. I don't really see them winning this one either.

I love my HP iPaq 612c and don't see changing from windows anytime in the future. I use my PDA Phone as a communication tool so I don't really care about the multi media aspect of things.

I also don't see why Apple has limited its' iPhone so much...not even SMS forwarding or MMS capability. Until Apple becomes more consumer friendly and less protective market centric, Microsoft has nothing to fear.

well i have an iphone and I can see by some of the comments here, these people obviousky dont own one. Jason.. the reason people are "obsessed" with accessing the internet on their mobile is because thats the whole point. You dont have to be stuck at a computer, and believe me I use my iphone to surf the internet unless I need to spend long periods on it. Its just easier to pick up the iphone rather than boot up the computer. Remember iPhone interface is very user friendly, thats why its so successful, which puts the comment from user 'Mont' in their place who says "Until Apple becomes more consumer friendly". lol They are user friendly, they are more user friendly than anything MS have ever made. Have you never been on a mac?

I had a windows mobile phone from HTC before my iphone and I would never go back to anything else. The iPhone is so good especially at surfing the web. The lack of some feature which I admit are somewhat annoying can easily be fixed through future firmware, but I would still rather have a stable easy to use phone with less features than a buggy, un-user friendly phone with more features.

I've had a number of pocket PC since Windows Mobile CE 2003. and I can tell development of this OS is a joke. Recent pocket PC's are attractive in their hardware specs like high-end models from HTC or the Samsung Omnia..etc. but they're held back by a crippled OS. Two unrivaled points of the iphone is it's stable OS and smooth GUI.

I have just purchased a HTC Touch HD and it's amazing! However much of this amazement is due to HTC's TouchFlo3d that makes the Windows Mobile experience so much less troublesome. Also you can forget messing around with Google Maps on the Iphone to try to navigate yourself around whilst in the car; WM plus Tomtom 7 on a 3.8" screen is unbeatable!

Nick,

You forgot non-chair-throwing. Mr. Balmer will be disappointed if you don't put that in.

I have a both a Win Mo (Samsung Omnia for work) and an IPhone. The Surfing experience on the IPhone is only about a thousand times easier and much more intuitive.

It'd rather see figures for units sold than browsing stats, as I would not be surprised if these statistics were somehow flawed (e.g. if using skyfire / opera not set as mobile-device does it still register as win-mo?), or were somehow a bad proxy for overall success of a platform.

I know more folk with WM phones than IPhones (one example: a gathering of a number of folk I noticed there were 3 Xperias, 1 Touch HD and 1 Iphone...), so I find it hard, at least from the people I know to see 10 times the number of Iphones compared to WM devices.

WinMob devices still outsell iPhone, Blackberry still outsells iPhone (3:1 by market share alone), browsing stats alone don't mean much especially when most iPhones are for consumers who surf versus WinMob and Blackberry products that interact more with the home server than n00btube.

I use all 5 major platforms on a regular basis and support 3 of them on a regulat basis, and while the iPhone is a great consumer product and is a success, it's nowhere near the Jebus phone people make it out to be. That people have to overinflate the statistical trends (like surfing) to try and make another point, is laughable. Just like those quoting the iphone summer numbers compared to Rim, while Apple had it's new launch product and everyone else had fall/winter products. Wonder if you revisit those numbers now, is Apple outselling everyone else again.... oh, wait... NO!

OMG what happened? Did they implode? Or did people like RIM and HTC launch their new products?

As for the comment on surfing, Nick Berry I don't surf on my phone, because I don't want a 400x200 screen, I surf on a computer, because I want a FULL screen. NFL.com and NHL.com on the iPhone SUCK! However nhl.com/mobile gets me my info ASAFP without waiting for the slow-A$$ mobile processors of ANY of the smartphones to load all that crap.

Pretending sufing on the iPhone is a pleasure is reality distortion field @ 100%, it's far from plesurable, it's simply better than it was before, but still far FAR from where it should be, and until it has an 800x600+ screen it's going to be no match for a PC (which doesn't have to be booted everytime, ever use standby/sleep? Still faster to resume from sleep, load a REAL webpage on a PC than to wait for it to render incorrectly on an iPhone or WinMob device). The only nice thing is that ALL of them PUSH the BAR/BAL forward and the NEXT Widget Hype Phone will be better than the last.

I'm sure I'll get slammed by all the iPhone fans out there who love their new found smartphone (as if they never existed before), but you're just kidding yourselves, it's a great product, but far from living up to the hype everyone seems to of out of their way to push. Your likely the same people who now bad mouth Palm's potential while forgetting your own past failures.

Anywhoo, I'm done my rant; Now I've gotta go and... Eat up Martha !

Everyone knows IPhones are for girls :D

I do like Windows Mobile, iPhone got NO SKYPE, iPhone got NO TomTom ( I have to pay for data plan to use those costly GPS on iPhone )!!