SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Windows Phone will not receive new features, and there will be no new Windows Phone hardware. The initial release was on October 21, 2010:
During the weekend, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore tweeted confirmation of something that has been suspected for many months: Microsoft is no longer developing new features or new hardware for Windows Mobile. Existing supported phones will receive bug fixes and security updates, but the platform is essentially now in maintenance mode.
Microsoft's difficulties in the mobile market are no secret, but for a time the company looked as if it was keeping Windows Mobile as a going concern regardless. Through 2016, Microsoft produced new builds for the Windows Insider program and added new features to Windows Mobile. At around the time of release of the Windows 10 Creators Update in April this year, that development largely ground to a halt. Windows Mobile, which already lacked certain features that were delivered to Windows on the PC, had its development forked. PC Windows development continued on the "Redstone 3" branch (which will culminate in the release of the Fall Creators Update later this month); Windows Mobile languished on a branch named "feature2."
[...] We might well wonder why Microsoft didn't say so sooner and instead strung along not only the platform's fans but even OEM partners; it's hard to imagine that HP would have built its Elite x3 phone had Microsoft been clearer about mobile.
Even with this announcement, there's still speculation that Microsoft is going to bring out a new device—something phone-like but not a phone—that'll compete, somehow, in the mobile space. For all the rumors about a "Surface Phone," though, it's unclear precisely what this device would do that is meaningfully different from anything else on the market or if it will be compelling enough to reverse the company's mobile fortunes. For now, all we can do is mourn: the best mobile platform isn't under active development any more, and the prospects of new hardware to run it on are slim to non-existent.
They should release an app that runs full Windows on an external display when an Android smartphone is docked. Put those 8-10 cores to good use.
(Score: 1) by Sourcery42 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:30PM (4 children)
The dismal failure is somewhat punctuated by what a head start they had on today's dominant players. Super early on with pocket computers Microsoft really did have a relatively good thing going with Windows Mobile. My wife had a Dell Axim back around 2002, and it really was a very functional pocket PC. It was way before smartphones and even before I remember seeing many Blackberry devices in the wild. Granted it wasn't a Microsoft branded device, but jam a mobile radio in that old Dell Axim and you would have had a smartphone at least 5 years before the first smartphones. Despite having a working mobile OS years before iOS or Android they managed to show up way late to the party with a phone.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @06:24PM
Of course Microsoft is going to develop some good products. Funded with buckets of ill gotten monopoly money and shady business practices. How could they not have some successes out of the things they try. They could also afford to hire a lot of very bright people.
It is amusing to see how quick the brain drain was with the emergence of Google and the other internet companies.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:03PM (2 children)
They were always late to the game. They were late to GUIs, they were late to the internet, they were late to about anything.
However on the PC they could afford to be late, because they had the dominant operating system, and people were unlikely to switch away soon as they would have had to replace all their software. With the mobile platform, things were different. Here it mattered to be in time, because it was an established platform.
With PC operating systems, they didn't have the problem because back then the deal with IBM essentially guaranteed them to become the standard platform.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:05PM
Reminder to self: Don't forget to proofread.
Should of course have been: because it was not an established platform.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:12PM
Except that MS had a established platform, in the form of PocketPC. But they threw that away and stated over with WinMob7, something that seems complete madness given how they have bent over backwards to maintain compatibility on the PC.