Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Takes Dig at Apple; Claims Surface Made Two-in-One Category Popular

Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella in a recent interview took a jibe at competitors while talking about the popularity of Surface devices. Nadella said the Surface made the two-in-one PC category popular.

Talking to The Australian Financial Review, he said, "I mean, take even Surface. Three years ago, the two-in-one as a form factor was questioned. Does anybody need one? And now guess what, even our competition has decided that it's not a refrigerator and a toaster but it's actually a two-in-one."

Nadella indirectly pointed to Cook's comments back in 2012 about two-in-one devices. Cook claimed that the hybrid devices came with "too many trade-offs" as pointed out by CNET. Not too long ago, Nadella was claimed to be more popular among his employees as compared to Steve Ballmer with an approval rating of 88 percent at the end of 2015.

The company CEO in the interview claimed that Microsoft is not afraid to take risks. "The key in any momentum we have is that you have to have some amount of boldness in taking risk, and knowing that you are not always going to get it right."

Adding further, he said that the Redmond giant is not working on a product just because a competitor is doing better in that category. "We don't want to be driven by just envy of what others have, the question is, what can we bring? That's where I look at any device form factor or any technology, even AI," added Nadella.

On Microsoft's presence in mobile space, he stated, "We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device."

"There are a few companies that are at the cutting-edge of AI, in whichever way you look at it," Mr Nadella said.

He also touched upon artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered bots becoming the next interface that can shape interactions with the help of apps and devices.

Nadella confessed that some companies are ahead of Microsoft in AI. "There are a few companies that are at the cutting-edge of AI, in whichever way you look at it."

But he stressed that Microsoft has the best capabilities around speech recognition. "But when you just look at the capability around speech recognition, who has the state of the art? Microsoft does ... What is the state of the art with image recognition? Microsoft again, and those are not subjective they are judged by objective criteria," he said.