Brave talk from incumbents on the eve of disruption:
About the iPhone:
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” —Palm CEO Ed Colligan, 2006
“Right now we’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year, Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they’ll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace and let’s see…what’s the expression? Let’s see how the competition goes.” —Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 2007
About the App Store:
“Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications—they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.” —Ballmer, 2009
About the iPad:
“It was a bigger iPod Touch. I question whether those features would be enough to get people to buy new machines.” —Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, 2010
About the Apple Watch:
“A watch is not only giving time, it’s a status symbol and I don’t think you’ll get a status symbol in an Apple Watch with two billion functions that no one understands.” —Longines president Walter von Kanel, 2015
About the Apple Car:
“Apple has no experience. There’s no reason to assume Apple will do a better job than General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota or Hyundai. I think this is going to be a gigantic money pit.” —Former GM exec Bob Lutz, 2015
“It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smart watches.” —Tesla CEO Elon Musk, 2015
See also: Tesla’s Elon Musk just trolled Apple in a big way
Subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
