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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: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday July 15 2015, @09:35PM
It's not like because the've never have really penetrated one of their markets, they're in "trouble".
Its their IBM-ification. IBM used to mean all computers. Period. End of line. Kind of like "xerox" means all photocopiers or "iphone" means all smartphones today even when they're androids.
Once they started to give ground to PCs in the 80s, it was all over, bye bye mainframe other than as a joke. Once that freight train starts runnin down hill, its all over till it reaches bottom. Guess who took over from IBM as defining "computing" to the general population?
20 years from now MS might be in IBMs place today, that consulting company that used to do something with those desktop things that people used to use, as they post nostalgically on their apple iContactLens or google direct brain stem interface or whatever.
My kids have tablets at school. They don't really use desktops anymore. Maybe when they're older they'll use a web browser to log into google drive and type in term papers, but they're at the "one page essay" age now. To my son, microsoft means "xbox" and nothing else, and my daughter has no knowledge of them other than Auntie temporarily had a shitty phone with no apps till she got a real iphone. Microsoft is dead as a major force. Like IBM they'll be around till the end of time, doing consulting and whatever and there will be legacy megacorps that haven't moved to China yet that still use MS office products...