By Pascal Oparada
Social Media/Tech Reporter
Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, revealed in a recent chat that one of the greatest mistakes he made two years ago was allowing tech rival, Google, to develop the Android Operating System.
Gates said the market was open for one other non-Apple product for mobile devices – and Google took advantage of the gap.
He said mismanagement at Microsoft caused the oversight.
“In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets,” Gates said.
“So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”
Currently, there are over 1.5 billion Microsoft Windows users which pales into insignificance in comparison to Android’s 2 billion users.
“If you’re there with half as many apps or 90% as many apps, you’re on your way to complete doom. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system and what’s that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G to company M,” Gates said.
He said an anti-trust lawsuit that stretched through the 1990s distracted him from dominating mobile.
In April, Microsoft became the third company with a trillion dollar value, following Apple and Amazon. Google is yet to get to the position.
