Analysts who cover Apple usually have experience in the computer industry. Computer hardware is not particularly useful in understanding the mobile phone business and nobody has any experience understanding cloud-based business models since they don’t currently exist. As a result it’s easy to dismiss something for which data does not exist.
When Steve Ballmer was famously laughing at the iPhone and saying that he likes the Windows Mobile strategy “a lot” he was sitting next to the then-CEO of Nortel (Mike Zafirovski formerly of Motorola) with whom the company had just closed a strategic deal. ”an alliance between Microsoft and Nortel announced in July 2006 … includes three new joint solutions to dramatically improve business communications by breaking down the barriers between voice, e-mail, instant messaging, multimedia conferencing and other forms of communication”.
What happened? Nortel declared bankruptcy two years later.
— Horace Dediu wrote up some quick stories of Microsoft’s past mobile-manufacturer partnerships. This one is so perfect. (via mrgan)
Assorted Slices is an editorial-based publication covering Apple Inc. and similar topics.
