The Bureau of Historic Losses · The Skeptics' Ledger
Entry № 012
Steve Ballmer
CEO, Microsoft
“There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
$1,000 of Bitcoin the day they said it, at its peak
US$105,503
its high so far — 106×, reached June 2026
Worth today
US$97,44697.4×
live valuation · refreshed hourly · usd
As of 18 June 2026, $1,000 of Bitcoin bought when Steve Ballmer said it (US$3 a coin) is worth US$97,446 today, and peaked at US$105,503 — 106× — in June 2026.
On the record
In an April 2007 interview, ahead of the iPhone's launch, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed it: 'There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.' He pointed to its price and lack of a physical keyboard. The iPhone became one of the best-selling products in history. The figure above tracks Apple stock since.
The clip has aged into a kind of folk artefact. In early 2007, shortly after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, Microsoft's chief executive was asked about it, and Steve Ballmer — who ran the most powerful software company on earth — laughed. “Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidised? With a plan?” he said, before delivering the line that would follow him forever: “There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
His case, again, was the sensible one. The phone was expensive. It had no physical keyboard, which every serious business user of the era considered essential. Microsoft and its partners owned the smartphone market that existed, and Ballmer was defending a real, profitable, dominant position against an unproven luxury toy. He was describing the present with great accuracy and the future not at all.
The iPhone went on to become one of the most successful products ever made, the engine of the most valuable company in the world, and the thing that quietly removed Microsoft from the centre of computing for a decade. The figure above is what a thousand dollars in Apple stock, bought the month he laughed, would be worth now.
Where they stand now
Ballmer has owned it with good humour ever since, conceding he “may have underestimated” the device and acknowledging Microsoft missed the phone era entirely. He left the CEO role in 2014; the receipt above kept counting.
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