Even though Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is more involved in his philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation rather than the day-to-day-activities of the Microsoft, he has still expressed displeasure at the software company's performance in the mobile market.

During the course of an interview with CBS This Morning, Gates said that Microsoft has not been innovative enough with regard to the present-day mobile-computing era; and termed the company's initial approach in this direction as "clearly a mistake."

When asked about whether he was happy with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's performance, Gates said that he and Ballmer are "two of the most self-critical people you can imagine;" and added that neither of them is fully convinced that Microsoft is doing all the "breakthrough things" that it can to take computing in a forward direction.

Nonetheless, Gates did admit that Ballmer had got a number of "amazing things" done for Microsoft in the last one year; and listed Ballmer's recent achievements like the Windows 8 OS; the Surface computer; improved Bing; and Xbox.

However, pointing out that he is not satisfied with Microsoft's present place in the computing world, especially against the backdrop of its position in the previous generation of computing, Gates said that the company failed to "get out in the lead very early" on cell phones, even though it had an early start with Windows Mobile.