Re: Did Microsoft gave windows 10 mobile less time to succeed as compared to windows phone 8,8.1
To start an argument, I would first ask if the question may be over-simplified. Too soon to what? To succeed? What would you call a success when entering as a third party distributor on a market that had by then buried many-many volunteers to do the same. Shouldn't we consider reaching a market share as high as 15% in selected countries already a success? Of course this counts all WP7 WP8, WP8.1 and WM10 altogether. But again as others have said, very limited devices came with the ability to upgrade to Windows 10, and even those, did? There are two ways to see this. One, they already succeeded, because I think, the way they entered to the market was impressive. Maybe not as impressive as the press, consumers and stakeholders would have expected, they may have hoped for a faster growth. But if you are not Chinese you have very limited space to move in. So in one way we could say, no they did not give up on Windows 10 Mobile too soon, but rather unplugged it unexpectedly. If we are to look at it the other way, saying, the transition between WP8.1 and 10 was not flawless and WM10 market share stayed below expectations that cannot be considered a success, we could start debating if it was given up upon too soon. But then what do we consider the point of giving up on. Clearly there was no marked point by Microsoft communication, so we can only guess here. But let's face it, WM10 has and had other issues than simply not getting devices (because it has), having an app gap (it was only decreasing, not increasing to begin with) or Satya Nadella not liking the third mobile platform idea (because he sure loves money, and if numbers could have disproved him, WM10 would still be a thing). I believe we need to clearly state what is considered here as a success. If I look at Microsoft in general, as Nadella said, it had become a could first, service first company. So no focus on "mobile", it was clear. Nevertheless I cannot accept that WM10 died because of the lack of focus. Windows 10 desktop "thrives" with all the surface devices coming off the line. But does it, really? I mean Microsoft managed to find a category, that it managed to produce quality hardware in and increase its profit in the segment. Only the way I see it. It is the hardware really. Let's face it. Windows 10 desktop suffers from the same thing that WM10 had always suffered from, inconsistency, everchanging UI, API, frameworks, malfunctioning, slow services (from a cloud first, service first) company. If we are to say that WM10 had not succeeded, and success would have been measured by an even larger spread in the market, in my humble opinion Microsoft did not fail in the mobile space, but as a service provider, as a software company, and really only succeeds in the hardware (surface line, X-Box One) that it continuously attempts to deny as a focus or its purpose. In this respect, WM10 was not given up on too soon, but too late. If one could have foreseen that 5 years was not enough for Microsoft to publish a working and reliable Skype, OneDrive, Contacts manager, Navigation, and search platform on its own, that all make the backbone of a mobile platform, should have closed the mobile branch as soon as possible and not let it suffer for years to come. While the mobile platform managed to produce something new and vibrant, Microsoft failed to fill it with content. The OS itself could not sell something without services that even Microsoft failed to deliver. And the problem is that it is considered even today to be the effect of a malfunctioning mobile division or a lack of focus. But let's face it, those services, compared to the competition, still 5uck5 on the desktop environment as well if exists at all. It is Microsoft, and their incompetent software delivery that had caused the death of its mobile platform that could not have been kept alive, even if Nadella had focused on it. And it is the same thing, that will sooner or later kill its desktop as well, and will make Surface products run Android or iOS within 5-10 years, if they keep on going on this road. Of course I am not saying that the lack of quality products is not the fault of Nadella as well, but the lack of focus on mobile is clearly not the bottleneck here.
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