Gates sees no Google threat in phone software: report

A Google search page is seen through the spectacles of a computer user in Leicester, central England July 20, 2007. Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates does not see Google Inc. becoming a successful competitor in the market for software for cellular phones, the New York Times reported on its Web site on Monday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates does not see Google Inc. becoming a successful competitor in the market for software for cellular 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.

"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 paper 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."

Microsoft and Google could not be reached immediately for comment.