Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer remains relatively bullish about the chances of Windows Phone 7 claiming significant mobile market share at some point in the near future.
“Now Mango, to most people in the room, is [just] a fruit. I like it better than apple, personally,” Ballmer joked during a keynote speech at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles.
“Phones, [yes], we’ve gone from very small to very small, but it’s been a heck of a year. And you’re going to see a lot of progress in that market competitively as we move forward.”
Although Ballmer declined to reveal exact sales figures, the CEO did confirm Microsoft had managed to offload “millions of phones” over the past year.
He also quoted recent claims by both Gartner and IDC estimating that WP7 – paired with Nokia hardware – could potentially become the No. 2 platform on the mobile market by 2015, ahead of Apple but behind Android.
“We know we’ve got a lot to do, but like the cloud, like NT many years back, we’re all in when it comes to mobile devices.
“And whether it’s phones, or slates, or PCs, or console devices, we’re certainly pushing extremely far, and extremely fast.”
[Via AppleInsider and Microsoft]
