Elevation’s McNamee Says Apple Is Winning All Profit in Mobile

By Ari Levy - Mar 30, 2012 6:30 AM GMT+0700

Technology investor Roger McNamee said all of the profit in mobile right now is being gobbled up by Apple Inc. (AAPL), while Google Inc. (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) are losing money in the business trying to keep up.

“There is no profitability at either Microsoft or Google from these devices,” McNamee said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s Margaret Brennan. “I don’t think these guys are going to roll over and let Apple own things forever.”

In order for other companies to compete with Apple’s iPad and iPhone, they have to go outside of the application model and use the HTML5 programming language to “create a new Web,” said McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners in Menlo Park, California. Elevation is an investor in Facebook Inc., (FB) another company that McNamee said has failed to make money in mobile.

The advantage Facebook has is that so many other websites are signing on users through the social-networking service, and that will eventually gravitate to mobile devices, McNamee said. Another advantage is that Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is the “best I’ve ever known” as far as entrepreneurs go, McNamee said. That includes the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s co- founder, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net