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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: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @06:32PM (2 children)
Not only was Microsoft too little, too late for Mobile, Steve Ballmer actually laughed at the original iPhone announcement. Obviously Apple just doesn't get it. How could a phone without a keyboard ever succeed?
See my post elsewhere here, but Microsoft almost missed the Internet in the 90's.
They also almost missed the rise of cheap Linux powered netbooks that would be Windows killers. They headed that off by twisting the OEM's arms. The fatal flaw in netbooks is that the hardware was made by the same companies making Windows PCs and laptops. Microsoft could threaten to not give them favorable license treatment, or even not give them Windows licenses at all. The deal was: Microsoft would resurrect dead XP, put it on Netbooks -- and the OEMs would get it for free, as long as they promised that all the netbooks' hardware would be forever crippled with inadequate specs -- even if those netbooks did not run Windows.
With a history of not keeping their eye on the ball, and near misses, it was bound to happen. Microsoft did actually miss the rise of mobile devices and smartphones. Throughout their history they viewed the world as "PC centered". Everything was a PC. Even a laptop. They tried tablets, but that form factor just didn't work with a desktop OS. So it was "obvious" to Microsoft that tablets couldn't possibly take off. And the only processor in the world is Intel. What other processor could one use in a mobile computing device? So there is no possible threat of serious mobile computing devices. Just can't happen.
But Microsoft did have the world's champion chair thrower.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:20PM (1 child)
Miss, MISS?! Not by a long shot!!!
The smartphone didn't start with iphone unless you have massive US consumer blinders on!
Apple was a latecomer to the scene, and they more got attention by leveraging their existing iPod/ITMS market than the iPhone itself.
Microsoft had been in the smartphone business for a decade already, as had the likes of Nokia, (Sony)Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola.
The blunder was that existing players bought the eyecandy angle and ended up alienating their existing, loyal, customers by rebooting product lines.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:34PM
Elsewhere here I point out that the iPhone was not so revolutionary as some think. The idea of Apps was already obvious.
Microsoft didn't see the vision in the iPhone. And later in Android. They had Windows Mobile, and they thought it was enough. I think they missed the revolution. Modern smartphones as we have them today were a paradigm shift. And Microsoft missed it. They only tried once it was already too late.
Apple was a latecomer to mobile phones. But the iPhone did change the whole industry from flip phones and candy bar phones into what most people use today. Google with Android wanted to lower the bar for everyone to have smartphones so they could have a new way to deliver ads.
If Microsoft did not miss the smartphone revolution, then why is Windows Phone dead? Oh, yeah. Because it had no apps. Without apps, you can't sell phones. Without a base of phones, you can't attract app developers. The same problem Linux desktop faced against Windows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.