While speaking at the “Blacks at Microsoft” annual company minority student day, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer was asked by a 15 year old audience member what he thinks about the Apple iPhone and what danger it presents. His answer was rather unpredictable:

Christopher German, 15, of Stadium High School in Tacoma: When the iPhone comes out, how will it affect the sales of the Zune and the different developments coming up for Microsoft?

Ballmer: Well, everybody gets a chance to do good work. We get a chance to do good work. Apple gets a chance to do good work. We’ll see. We’ll see how many people think what they’ve done is good work. I’m sure a lot of people are going to think there’s at least one or two things in there that are cool and I think a lot of people, I don’t know, 500 bucks for a phone? With a plan? I don’t know what it could be like for everybody but that’s a little pricey to me. For whatever set of reasons - can you afford the $500? Would your parents want to give you something - I mean, I wouldn’t want my kids carrying it around. Anybody here ever happen to lose a cell phone besides me? … I’m not sure it makes a huge breakthrough right away.

But that’s one of the great things that makes — it ensures that everybody gets better products at lower prices. … Apples, Zunes, Windows phones — we’re gong to compete like crazy. And somehow out of all of that, you know, people are going to be able to find cheaper, better products. That’s a good thing, and since I work at Microsoft I can’t say I guarantee you but I would say, I’ll tell you which one I want to win. And we’re going to work very hard to knock their block off, so to speak.

This is a surprising development, as we all thought that Steve Ballmer could afford to spend $500 on a phone.

iPhoneWorld.ca now reports that he’s greatly underpaid and will be looking for a new job soon, possibly in Apple Inc., so he could get a free iPhone without killing his whole family budget on it.

Thanks: seattlepi.

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