We're Not Building Luxury Goods : Microsoft takes a dig at Apple

Once a juggernaut during the PC era, now it’s not a secret that Microsoft has lost the mobile war and gradually became more of an enterprise-focused company with its aggressive investments in cloud and Office 365, but CEO Satya Nadella suggests that its consumer approach is completely different from what rivals Apple and Google are doing right now.

The technology that Microsoft builds is specifically supposed to let customers create further technology, he explains, while its rivals are focused entirely on delivering products to consumers that directly address their needs.

“Whenever we have done things that come naturally to us we’ve been successful,” Nadella was quoted as saying by Softpedia. “Even if it's a consumer product it is a tool. I fell in love with Microsoft technology because of what it created."

“In a way, I don’t want to take away from whatever success Apple or Google are having. We are very different companies. We are not some middleman in the marketplace. We are a tool creator, we are not a luxury good manufacturer. That’s not who we are. We are about creating technologies so that others can build.”

While Nadella doesn’t mention Apple specifically, the “luxury good manufacturer” is a direct reference to the Cupertino-based rival who builds devices that are often positioned as luxury products. The iPhone X, for example, is the most expensive iPhone model ever released, with pricing reaching $1,149 at the Apple Store for the 256GB model.

And yet, this appears to be just partially true, as the top-of-the-range Surface models themselves are quite pricey. The most powerful Surface Book 2 costs more than $3,000, while the Surface Studio can reach $4,199 when equipped with the most powerful hardware.

Ever since he took over the leadership role at Microsoft, Satya Nadella has been using a gentleman approach towards rivals, and in this new interview, he explains that Google and Apple don’t necessarily have to go down in order for Microsoft to become more successful. Instead, they can all benefit from the competition, especially because each has a different culture and approach towards customers.

“You take a look at what we did with Groove and Spotify. Look at the Harmon Kardon speaker. In some sense, it is a fantastic Cortana speaker but also for Spotify. The last time I checked there were a lot more Spotify people than Groove people. So let us bring the best of what Microsoft has to a Spotify user and create consumer fans. So that’s the approach we want to take,” he concluded.