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Ballmer missed mobile as well, despite having a decade head start. Remember his predictions about the iphone?

Yeah, while Google immediately scrapped their blackberry like phone project to quickly accelerate an iPhone-ish design for the first android phone, Ballmer made MSFT's probably largest strategic mistake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycUOENFIBs

I don't buy the 'things were in motion' while he was there, I think if they were it was in spite of his direction, not because of it.

But don't worry you guys! We're going to rush the Zune to the market and win the media player wars that Apple just ended!

I hated microsoft's plays for sure program. What a lie.

Funnily enough Zune wasn't even PlaysForSure. Microsoft actually killed their own music player ecosystem to try and create another one that they owned completely. Then the music industry said "fuck it, we're going DRM-free" if only so that they could sell songs outside of iTunes and have them work on iPods.

It helps that Jobs himself hated DRM on music so much that he was willing to give up a legitimate competitive advantage to improve the customer experience.

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