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Nokia-Dead

Today, Microsoft announced that it's effectively killing the last vestiges of the Nokia assets information technology bought for $7.1 billion 3 years ago. After selling the feature phone business organisation to Foxconn last week for $350 million, and firing 7,800 people concluding twelvemonth, Microsoft is firing 1850 people (one,350 from Finland, 500 elsewhere) and essentially exiting telephone hardware birthday.

Oh, it's not technically out of the game — information technology all the same wants to focus on enterprise devices and bring new products to market. But with nearly all of its acquired employees gone, its feature phone business organisation jettisoned, and Windows ten Mobile now reduced to less than one% market share, it'due south not clear who Microsoft thinks is going to buy its products.

Ars Technica has published a full e-mail from Terry Myerson, which states in function: "our phone success has been express to companies valuing our delivery to security, manageability, and Continuum, and with consumers who value the same. Thus, we need to be more focused in our phone hardware efforts… [W]e're scaling dorsum, but we're not out!"

It's actually difficult at this bespeak to see just how Microsoft isn't out of the phone concern. "Scaling back" and "streamlining" are great euphemisms, just no i is ownership Windows 10 Mobile devices. Rumors of a "Surface Phone," at this signal, make little sense. No 1 is pushing to buy such a device, and no i is waiting on Microsoft to evangelize the all-in-one platform across all devices that the company has spent decades edifice.

BloomIsOff

Any blossom existed on this particular rose, information technology's dead at present. Also, does anyone else think Steve Ballmer looks like a desperately programmed animatronic version of himself?

The tragedy here is that there was a fourth dimension when consumers might arguably have been hungry for such products. In the early, pre-iPhone smartphone era, Windows Mobile (non to be dislocated with Windows Phone or Windows ten Mobile) was built on Windows CE and mimicked many features of the Windows UI, but shrunk them to a tiny screen that only worked with a stylus. Back and so, there might have been a apparent argument to be made that consumers actively wanted mobile devices with easy admission to documents, files, information, and email, all based in the Windows ecosystem, and all available across a broad platform of devices. Of course devices of that era were only capable of a fraction of what today'due south hardware can perform, which undoubtedly gave Microsoft an illusion of safety as evidenced by the visitor's early on dismissal of the iPhone.

Microsoft has achieved something unique in its efforts with Windows 10 — an OS that, for the offset time, truly unites mobile and desktop products. In one case the Xbox One runs Windows 10, information technology'll take achieved a seamless OS beyond all three major platforms. The only trouble is, very few people in mobile really intendance about its signature achievement.

Focusing on enterprise and business concern users is exactly the wrong tack to take here. Enterprise users aren't going to salve BlackBerry, and they aren't going to save Microsoft, either. The company's mobile operating system is dead, whether it builds a Surface Phone or non, non considering there's anything wrong with Windows 10 Mobile, just because consumers and companies have already voted, and they've voted no.

Just as Intel failed to achieve market success in mobile, and so has Microsoft. If it had taken this step with Windows Phone 7 or even viii, it might have been dissimilar — merely Windows 10 Mobile is besides little, too late.