Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, recently opened up about a career-defining mistake that cost the company a staggering $400 billion. Speaking at an event hosted by venture firm Village Global, Gates candidly discussed Microsoft’s failure to secure a foothold in the mobile operating system market—a lapse that allowed Google’s Android to dominate as the go-to non-Apple platform.
“You know, in the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets,” Gates explained in his conversation with Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz. “The greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”
Gates did simple math that if Microsoft had captured the second-best spot in the mobile OS space, the company could have claimed a $400 billion slice of the pie—money that instead bolstered Google.
The Missed Opportunity
Apple’s iPhone debuted in June 2007, followed by Android-powered devices in September 2008. Microsoft’s entry into the smartphone arena, the Windows Phone 7, arrived much later in October 2010. By then, the mobile OS market was all but sewn up, with Android and iOS collectively claiming 99.9% of the market share.
Gates acknowledged that being late to the game sealed Microsoft’s fate in mobile. “If you’re there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you’re on your way to complete doom,” he said.
Microsoft’s mobile misstep contrasts sharply with its dominance in the PC market. The company’s Windows OS transformed personal computing in the 1990s and remains a cornerstone of its $3 trillion valuation. Yet, as Gates put it, had Microsoft succeeded in the mobile race, “we would be the company.”
Rich Miner’s Retort
Gates’ reflections didn’t go unnoticed by Rich Miner, co-founder of Android. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Miner offered a sharp rebuttal:
“I literally helped create Android to prevent Microsoft from controlling the phone the way they did the PC—stifling innovation. So it’s always funny for me to hear Gates whine about losing mobile to Android.”
So, it looks like Microsoft also contributed (albeit indirectly) to the inception of Android. In its heyday, Microsoft’s dominance in the PC market was often criticized for discouraging competition and innovation.
Android’s open-source model, by contrast, was designed to provide an alternative to proprietary ecosystems, including those of both Microsoft and Apple.
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