Banned In The Gates Household: iPhones and iPods

In this month’s Vogue, Melinda Gates, the wife of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Founder Bill Gates and partner in crime for their worldwide philanthropic activities, talks about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in a more light-hearted moment addresses the family’s rivalry with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), according to Geeksugar.com. Melinda Gates said even she envies the iPhone occasionally, but that “there are very few things that are on the banned list in our household…iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids.”

A good follow-up question would have been to ask what’s allowed in the couple’s home away from home — the Foundation. To be sure, it’s not iPhones, and it’s definitely not Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices. On more than one occasion, we’ve heard Foundation employees gripe about how once Bill Gates learned of the pervasiveness of the BlackBerry in the organization, he swiftly acted to convert most everyone over to Windows Mobile.

Luckily, the Foundation doesn’t appear to have a similar bias when it comes to donations. At Mobile World Congress two weeks ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the GSMA announced a program that will expand financial services to people in the developing world through mobile phones (and we doubt they are using Windows Mobile). The Foundation says it is granting the “Mobile Money for the Unbanked” program $12.5 million.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post