This must have been difficult to hear, especially since over the last year Microsoft’s message has been that Windows Mobile is not only popular among business users, but for consumers, as well. Now we are hearing directly from the CIOs at large public companies that their employees don’t like Windows Mobile and instead are preferring consumer devices, like Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone. TechFlash reported the exchange, which took place today during a Q&A at the company’s Public Sector CIO Summit at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash.
Chris Kemp, the CIO at NASA’s Ames Research Center, was the one who posed the question: “With platforms like the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) 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. 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.”
More after the jump
Ballmer’s response was a bit defensive, saying that a new OS release is coming this year, and he even took a stab at Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google: “We have a significant release coming this year. Not the full release we wanted to have this year but we have a significant release coming this year with Windows Mobile 6.5…But I think with Windows Mobile 6.5, there will be phones in market this year. We still don’t get some of the things that people want on the highest-end phones. Those will come on Windows Mobile 7 next year. Certainly I’m not, um — there’s opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area, and we’ve done a lot of work to really make sure we have a team that’s going to be able to accelerate. With that said, we did sell more Windows Mobile devices last year than Apple did iPhones — just an important factoid to have. Blackberry was a little bit ahead, and Google was nowhere to be seen, except in Silicon Valley, I’m sure. But we’ll do our best to help you with that challenge.”
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