Ballmer changes tune while dancing around Apple’s success

Steve Ballmer, already famous for his dancing skills, has pulled off a spectacular 180º pirouette in his position on Apple. In an email earlier this summer, Ballmer addressed Apple’s rising threat to Microsoft’s operating system dominance, telling staffers Apple’s success was:

Because they [Apple] are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.

In the interview with Ann Winblad, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ballmer neatly about-faced this position. Discussing current market-leader Nokia’s 30% position, Ballmer stated, “If you want to reach more than that, you have to separate the hardware and software in the platform.” This, obviously, is the same model that propelled Microsoft to dominance in desktop computing with the Windows OS, and it is exactly what Ballmer vowed to Think Different about in his memo!