Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the world, explained what was his biggest mistake, and implicitly the company he led. More exactly, Bill Gates says that he was very wrong when he failed to guide Microsoft to develop an operating system as important as it is Android.
Although Microsoft has Windows, which controls the computer market, of any type, without any right of appeal, in the case of phones, Google controls everything, followed by the Apple company. Bill Gates says he's sorry he didn't have the vision to guide Microsoft to develop similar software that would allow it to control the phone market.
Bill Gates says that his mistake would have cost Microsoft no less than 400 billion dollars, a huge figure, which represents the company's revenues for approximately 3 years. Of course, Bill Gates was not Steve Jobs, but neither was the famous co-founder of Apple very greedy, otherwise iOS would have controlled the smartphone world instead of Android.
"In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So the biggest 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. It really is winner take all. If you're there with half as many apps or 90 percent 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."
