Shareholders Question Ballmer About Apple

TechFlash reports that during a meeting with shareholders yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is questioned about Microsoft's poor reputation as compared with Apple among young computer users and college students.

"I'm just wondering why your marketing group can't do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you've got a real bad image out there," a shareholder asked, while noting that Apple's ads make the company look "like a buffoon."

"There's certainly always opportunities for improvement," acknowledging that there "is a group of people with whom our market share is less."


"You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing?" he continued. "The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that's a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac."

He acknowledged that Apple has "picked up a couple of tenths of a percent of market share." Some shareholders scoffed at the seemingly minimal gains but Ballmer corrected them saying every couple of tenths matter.

"They matter when we're increasing our Bing market share, too," he said.

He added, "We're working hard on it. Windows 7 I think gives us a real opportunity to come back again at some audiences that have been tougher for us. Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer ... but we have opportunities to improve among exactly the constituency that you identify."


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