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A look back: Steve Ballmer laughs at the iPhone

Friday to mark the 5th anniversary of public release of Apple's iPhone

By Paul McNamara on Tue, 06/26/12 - 9:36am.

With the 5th anniversary of the iPhone's public release coming on Friday, I thought those who haven't seen it might enjoy this interview Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave in January 2007, right after Apple and Steve Jobs unveiled the device at Macworld. Asked for his "first reaction" after seeing the iPhone, Ballmer replies with haughty laughter:

"Five hundred dollars fully subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine .... I like our strategy. I like it a lot....Right now we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year, Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace and let's see ... let's see how the competition goes."

Let's see.

(8 pundits who predicted 'The iPhone Will Fail' explain themselves)

And if you missed last week's post about the first iPhone commercials, you can see it and them here.

 

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