BARCELONA, Spain — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s mobile-phone strategy: sell a lot of devices.
“Many phones times a small amount of money, hopefully is enough to make this all make sense,” Ballmer said in an interview on the sidelines of the four-day GSMA’s World Mobile Congress, where Microsoft unveiled a new mobile-phone strategy.
The company that best-known for its PC software, but which has been playing in the mobile field for the last seven years, wants to persuade consumers to buy smart phones — the fastest-growing segment of the handset market — because they are running Microsoft operating system.
That may seem counterintuitive. Even Ballmer knows that hardware — not software — is what creates consumer excitement, something in shorter supply as the world economic downturn has dramatically cut consumer confidence.
“The thing that people buzz about is the actual thing they go and buy, which is the phone, which comes from one of our partners,” Ballmer said in an interview Monday.
The new software will be Windows Mobile 6.5 in the series — but will be marketed to consumers simply as Windows Phone — will include a new user interface and a new browser. Windows also is launching two new services, one that allows users to synch their text messages, photos, video, contacts and more to the Web and an applications store that will bring together the 20,000 applications that have been developed for Microsoft-based phones.
“It is important for us that we have a strong presence and position on the phone,” Ballmer said.
More than 20 million devices carrying Microsoft’s operating system were sold in 2008. Ballmer said he expects to grow the market share, but he declined to make forecasts. Microsoft doesn’t say how much it sells the software for, but analysts at the GSMA put it in the ballpark of $5 to $7 per handset.
“The most important thing we’ll do is we’re going to work with the guys who build phones that are exciting … that are hot and tell the story of their Windows phone,” Ballmer said. “The windows phone from HTC, the line of Windows phones from Samsung, from LG, really getting with the partner and telling the story of the partner and their device.”
To that end, key partners HTC, LG Electronics and Orange also unveiled new Windows phones based on the new Windows operating system in Barcelona. LG said it will dramatically increase the number of phones it offers running Windows, making it the primary operating system for its smart phones. LG said its volume of windows phones would increase 10 times this year.
Telecoms operators — notably Vodafone — have signaled that they want fewer not more operating platforms.
But Ballmer thinks Windows Mobile is better positioned than the other operating systems because it can run on phones for a range of prices — from the upper $600 smart phone to the $250 model.
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