They had larger market share than iPhone is 14 countries or something like that and were growing in the US actually went from 2% to a little over 4% in a years time. They were as high as 14 % in other parts of the world. Mobile and phones are where the current and future consumer interest is and they blew it. Nadella really screwed this up.
As much as I agree, I'm still not sure it's that simple. Nadella sacrificed Mobile just to save the rest of the company, more or less.
Two simple things that would have improved the W10M model launch, without adding that much cost (
purely speculating, old rant):
1 - Don't launch before ~10586.107, the first builds were half baked. Let people wait, it's better than launching the next big mobile OS that's not ready for review. The reviews at launch gets all the attention, very few (fewer than the WP market share) cares what happens 3 months later.
Ironically, the bad rep is the reason for why I bought a 950, the price dropped quickly..
2 - Give the 950's the same design as the 650. This is such a no-brainer. Why make the premium models look cheaper?
It wouldn't make much difference in terms of market share today though, I know that.
What pisses me of is that MS didn't even try the best with what they had.
Then we have all the OS versions, some upgrade limitations makes sense here, but not all.
Windows Mobile 6.5 can't be upgraded Windows Phone 7.
Windows Phone 7 can't be upgraded Windows Phone 8.
Windows Phone 8.1 can't be upgraded Windows 10 Mobile officially (most models).
Windows Phone 8 RT can't be upgraded Windows 10 of any kind officially.
The problem is that MS start from scratch way too often with their Mobile versions. This scares users and developers away, besides the app gap, and just as important, app QUALITY gap.
At the same time they developed W10M for Android phones (for a while), just to **** off WM users even more. It's technically possible to upgrade an Android phone to WM, but not older WP models?
I don't expect to be running Windows 10 ARM on my 950 in the future, for obvious reasons, and I don't need to. I just want some decent apps that keeps on getting updated, that's all.