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: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
1. Microsoft killed their own chances with Windows Phone 10. Their biggest fans in 2003 bought Pocket PC products and made applications for them. Then it got dumped. Then their biggest fans got Windows Mobile and made applications for it, then that got dumped. Then Windows Phone 7 came out and their fans bought that and built mobile applications. Then that got dumped - most Windows Phone 7 apps needed to be rewritten for Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 8 and 10 came out, and regardless of how good they were nobody cared anymore. iOS and Android might suck, but they evolved in a way that didn't abandon earlier buyers or application developers. Microsoft kept starting over, and alienated everyone.
2. Mobile is the future for most people. Power users will always need high performance laptops, desktops, and servers. But my wife does all of her work and personal computing on tablets and smartphones. By screwing this up, Microsoft guaranteed that they won't own as much of the consumer market in 2027 as they did in 2007. They might do well in business with Azure and Office 365, but I firmly believe that failing to get a foothold on mobile is their biggest strategic error in the history of the company.
I am an FSF member, so I don't mind that they're screwing up. I'm just surprised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:23PM (1 child)
Your first point is highly correct. One would have thought that a company with such a history of maintaining compatibility as Microsoft would not have blundered like they did when they made Winmob7 incompatible with the PocketPC lineage.
Your second point on the other hand is a valley pipe dream.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:12PM
He has it pretty spot on. WinCE phones were *THE* status symbol of tech execs. You could get dozens of apps from the internet and put them on your phone and do pretty cool stuff. The devs would complile them for MIPS, SH3, ARM all for you. The flash memory sizes stunk and the data plans were bend you over and charge you a fortune per MB. People wanted WinCE devices. The iPaq was one of DELLs best selling devices to date.
MS then did not do the one thing it did with its real windows line. Backwards compatibility was tossed out the window on every device. People put up with activesync for awhile. But once iPhone came out (a good 6 years after the first wince phones) it was game over. Apple made it 'just work' and gave it plenty of flash and Jobs demanded a decent data plan to go with it. He was going to make 30% on every application sold.
MS should have owned that market. They wasted it. Don't think so? Then why does Apple pay MS a royalty on every phone sold? Because MS has a huge stack of phone patents. Even BEFORE they bought Nokia.