Superior software on offer from other vendors will mean that Google's rumoured move on to the mobile phone market will have little major impact, according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

The ever-growing internet giant is widely reported to be planning a move on to the mobile phone market with a product backed by its own search software.

Speaking to the New York Times, however, Gates insisted that Google's record on other new releases was unimpressive. "How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products?" he asked.

"They've introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So, you're now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they're going to have the world's best phone and it's going to be free?"

Billionaire Gates also suggested that Google's inferior overall software capabilities would see any new phone prove no real threat to Microsoft, which currently has around a ten per cent share of the mobile market.

"The phone is becoming way more software intensive. And to be able to say that there's some challenge for us in the phone market when it's becoming software intensive, I don't see that."

According to recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent)