Microsoft’s leader has disclosed his ‘greatest mistake ever,’ which resulted in a loss of $400 billion for the company.
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft, the well-known software giant, with his childhood friend and fellow Washington native, Paul Allen, in 1975.
Within four years, their groundbreaking technology achieved remarkable success, surpassing $1 million in sales before becoming publicly available in 1986.
Currently, Microsoft Corporation is valued at approximately three trillion dollars, and Gates was the world’s wealthiest individual for many years. However, by 2023, he had fallen to the position of the sixth richest American and the seventh richest person globally.
Despite this, Forbes reports that he possesses a net worth of $103.8 billion and dedicates much of his time to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nevertheless, Gates is still active in the business world. Recently, he joined Eventbrite CEO, Julia Hartz, at a Village Global event to discuss business strategies and success secrets.
During this gathering, Gates confessed to making one of the costliest errors of his career, amounting to a $400 billion loss—a substantial sum to miss out on.
Gates stated that this significant setback occurred when tech companies vied for the second position in the phone market after Apple, with Microsoft lagging in the competition.
In the interview, he said: “You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform.
“That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”
Gates added: “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 [Google] to company M [Microsoft].”
Beyond the $400 billion loss, Gates acknowledged that this blunder was ‘a super important one’ and possibly ‘one of the greatest mistakes of all time’.
According to Inc.com, Apple’s iPhone debuted in June 2007, followed by Google’s Android-based smartphone in September 2008, just over a year later.
On the other hand, Windows Phone 7 was not launched until October 2010, allowing Android and Apple to seize 99.9 percent of the market share and leave other competitors behind.
While Gates acknowledged that Microsoft remains ‘a leading company,’ he noted that securing the mobile position after Apple would have made them ‘the company,’ as reported by TechCrunch.
In response, he simply shrugged, saying, ‘But oh well’.