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Windows Phone isn’t going away.
You might think it was doomed, following Microsoft’s reorganization of its phone business just days ago, especially after Microsoft wrote down the value of the business. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put those fears to rest, however, in an interview with ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.
Nadella has emphasized, time and again, that his goal is for Microsoft to establish new product categories that partners can build upon. In the phone business, however, partners haven’t followed Microsoft’s lead.
Nadella seems to be fine with that. “If there are a lot of OEMs, we’ll have one strategy. If there are no OEMs, we’ll have one strategy,” Nadella said of Windows Phone's future. Microsoft seems content to go it alone, or if a hardware partner like HTC or Samsung commits to the platform, that’s fine too.
Nadella has previously characterized Windows 10 as an operating system that straddles multiple hardware platforms: the desktop PC, the notebook, the tablet, the phone, the Surface Hub, HoloLens, and the Xbox. The market hasn't really bought this story so far, at least where Windows phones are concerned.
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Still, we now know this: Microsoft’s in phones for the long haul. And that’s reassuring both to fans of the platform and to those who are keeping an eye on Microsoft’s long-term vision for Windows 10.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Wednesday July 15 2015, @08:41PM
As much as I'd like to Microsoft as a whole die a painful death, competition is good. If Microsoft can make a mobile OS that can be installed on the same hardware as Android phones, that would be great. It would encourage manufacturers to create good hardware with unlocked bootloaders. It would help push Microsoft create an OS that people would *want* to use, rather than one that they must install that's effectively a tax. It would encourage Android to stay competitive as well.
Office
All of this is unlikely of course, but is possible. Just as Linux is to Wintel hardware, Windows Phone could be to Android hardware. It would have to be stable, fast, secure, and ideally not be a crippled walled-garden. Ideally it would be at least as open as Android, but That may be reaching a bit.
I'm not sure that would ever happen, as the only reason I can see Microsoft wanting to get into the mobile business is to help its Office lock-in, which its already working on with the Android and iOS apps. There can't be a lot of money in the actual phone OS and hardware. Apple wants to sell people expensive hardware (and get their cut of the walled garden). Google wants to web to be open so they can display ads, and they want to gather data to target them well. I would assume that MS would want to either sell its OS or Office products. If it had a mobile OS that in addition to be a good mobile computing platform, was the *best* mobile Office platform, they might attract some business from the 'enterprise' folks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2015, @08:57PM
It would encourage manufacturers to create good hardware with unlocked bootloaders.
Unless you can show how that would that allow the manufacturer to sell substantially more phones, there's no reason to believe it would have that effect at all. And, no, the .001% of people who care about unlocked bootloaders are not a substantial market.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday July 16 2015, @02:33AM
Good hardware is good hardware, and with easy installers (they do exist), a quality phone could be sold that would let people choose Android, Windows Mobile, Ubuntu Phone, or other. Basically the same sort of way that many people (yes, developers mostly) will buy a MacBook to run Linux on. There are also a few (mostly non-developers, that I've seen) that will install Windows on a MacBook.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday July 15 2015, @09:56PM
If Microsoft can make a mobile OS that can be installed on the same hardware as Android phones, that would be great.
We must keep in mind that MS's business model is different from ones that Apple and Google use. Microsoft must sell software because they have no other sources of income. They do not sell overpriced fashion items like Apple does. They do not tie their products into a planet-wide ad network as Google does. Microsoft may afford to offer a few products for free, like they do with Express tools or this Win10 for R-Pi, but in the end they need revenue to feed all the crowd in Redmond. Those monies can come only from the customers. How many customers want to pay for something if the competing product is free?
I believe that MS will pay dearly for this detour into mobile. MS is simply not competent to develop a mobile OS. Strange, but those are the facts. Apple did it; Google did it; even Palm people did it in their time. But MS struggles with those designs since WinCE - and they never produced something that people wanted to use. MS specializes in large, massive, complex software like Exchange or other roles of Windows Server. Windows alone is a huge project - and it generally works. Apparently it takes different thinking to produce small software for small devices. It may be that MS simply does not have the necessary talent.