Microsoft's Bill Gates does not see Google becoming a successful competitor in the market for software for mobile phones, the New York Times reported on its web site on Monday.
Gates told the Times it was unlikely that Google would be able to make inroads into Microsoft's share of the market for mobile phone software (namely Windows Mobile).

"How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products?" the Times quoted Gates as saying.
"They've introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So you're now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they're going to have the world's best phone and it's going to be free?" the paper quoted him as saying.

Google has been reported to be preparing to enter the cell phone market with its own software, the New York Times said. Microsoft has about 10 percent of that market, it said:

"The phone is becoming way more software intensive," Gates told the Times. "And to be able to say that there's some challenge for us in the phone market when its becoming software-intensive, I don't see that."

I couldn't agree more but we have to keep in mind that devices are becoming more smarter and connected now and as a part of it, web services are becoming more important. And as good as some Windows Live Services (for Windows Mobile) are, as better are most Google services (on the Desktop/Notebook) where some of them are available for mobile devices, including Windows Mobile as well. So Microsoft better not underestimate the importance of web services for mobile devices (as Microsoft did in the past for web services for PCs).

Cheers ~ Arne