Roughly three years into his retirement from Microsoft, the company's colorful former CEO, Steve Ballmer is beginning to open up a bit more about his past mistakes and his relationship with Bill Gates.
Now the owner of the Clippers in Los Angeles, where he can be seen cavorting on the sidelines as his team faces off against NBA competitors, Ballmer remains energetic, but seems at peace with his history at the company.
However, there does appear to be an effort on his part to frame history in a more forgiving way in terms of his greatest miss: the smartphone.
Asked by Bloomberg (see video, above) what he was thinking back in 2007 when he scoffed at the release of the iPhone, Ballmer explains that the device's high price drove his mocking laughter, and he didn't account for Apple's strategy of working with wireless carriers to subsidize the price of the phone in monthly bills.
Well, as history has shown, the joke (see video, below) was on Ballmer, as the iPhone has become Apple's greatest success, and the standard bearer for the entire smartphone industry.
Despite that epic miss, Ballmer maintains that he nevertheless became an advocate of getting Microsoft into the hardware business, a direction that apparently drove him and Gates apart.
"We should have been in the hardware business sooner."
"I think there was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business," says Ballmer. "I had pushed Surface and the board was a little reluctant in supporting it. Things came to a climax around what to do about the phone business."
Ultimately, Ballmer maintains, pushing harder on hardware was one of the things he would have changed about his long tenure.
"We should have been in the hardware business sooner, in the [smart] phone case."
As for his relationship with Gates, Ballmer says that their relationship, which had previously been similar to two brothers, changed greatly over the years, apparently due in part to differences in strategy positions and engagements with the board.
Today, as Gates works to give his money away and work on global health challenges, and Ballmer explores opportunities to add to his NBA life, sadly, the two no longer appear to be very close.
"We drifted apart," says Ballmer. "He's got his life, I’ve got mine."
