Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates has said that Microsoft's strategy for mobile phones was a failure in the early days. When he was asked why it has struggled he said “That's too complicated”.

Gates spoke out in an interview with Charlie Rose for CBS This Morning and 60 Minutes. During the interview he said that Microsoft under Steve Ballmers' leadership has not ‘not created enough technological breakthroughs'.

He was asked if he was pleased with the way that Ballmer was running Microsoft. He replied with “”Well, he and I are two of the most self-critical people — you can imagine. And there were a lot of amazing things that Steve's leadership got done with the company in the last year. Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer. Bing, people are seeing as a better search product, Xbox.

“But is — is it enough?” No, he and I are not satisfied that in terms of, you know, breakthrough things, that we're doing everything possible.”

He also admitted that Microsoft's cellphone project failed in the early days ‘There are a lot of things like cellphones where we didn't get out in the lead very early. We didn't miss cellphones, but the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership. So it's clearly a mistake.”

Microsoft built and released a smartphone years before Apple released their iPhone. They butchered the operating system however rather than building a mobile operating system from the ground up to suit mobile phones. Apple then stepped in with iOS later which delivered a much smoother experience for the end user.

Kitguru says: If Microsoft had gotten their mobile phone right from the start we think Apple would be in a much weaker position today.

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