Google no threat to Windows Mobile, claims Gates

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Bill Gates has dismissed the prospect of Google entering the mobile phone software market and making any significant impact on existing software developers.

The Microsoft chairman and co-founder made his comments in an article published on the New York Times Web site earlier today.

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.

"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?"

Google has been reported to be preparing to enter the cell phone market with its own software, the paper said. Microsoft has about 10 per cent 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 it's becoming software-intensive, I don't see that."

Microsoft and Google could not be reached immediately for comment.

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