Why Did Microsoft Seem to Forfeit the Mobile Phone War?

[LittleOsorio]

It seems Microsoft left the consumer base they created with WP8 in the dust in W10M after seemingly discontinuing the Lumia line and not at all advertising Windows 10 Mobile. They also have not been pushing UWP and seemingly abandoning it for x86 emulation. What are Microsoft's plan for the future of mobile? What are they thinking?

 

[anon(50597)]

Well, since Android and Apple own 99% of the market, I believe MS decided to try something different. Smart move.

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[Wolfjt]

It seems Microsoft left the consumer base they created with WP8 in the dust in W10M after seemingly discontinuing the Lumia line and not at all advertising Windows 10 Mobile. They also have not been pushing UWP and seemingly abandoning it for x86 emulation. What are Microsoft's plan for the future of mobile? What are they thinking?

They couldn't sustain the money drain that was mobile. They don't have an endless supply of profits

 

[libra89]

Well, since Android and Apple own 99% of the market, I believe MS decided to try something different. Smart move.

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This, and they can afford to, unlike a lot of companies.

 

[xandros9]

Nadella probably didn't see the value in mobile that Ballmer saw.

Like how Mark Hurd bought Palm and HP had all these grand plans of sticking webOS on everything (spawning the webOS toaster joke) and then he's replaced with interim CEO Apotheker who had a dramatically different plan for HP resulting in the canning of webOS and almost the consumer PC unit as well.

 

[Wolfjt]

Nadella probably didn't see the value in mobile that Ballmer saw.

Like how Mark Hurd bought Palm and HP had all these grand plans of sticking webOS on everything (spawning the webOS toaster joke) and then he's replaced with interim CEO Apotheker who had a dramatically different plan for HP resulting in the canning of webOS and almost the consumer PC unit as well.

Yeah, I heard Nedella was against the Nokia purchase. It's a shame that Win Phone didn't make it.

 

[sumton]

i think they are trying to find the shortest path to win some ground

 

[oviedofreak82]

This all started ten years ago when Steve Ballmer downplayed the impact the iPhone would have. If he would've seen it as a threat, Microsoft could've been more competitive instead of playing catch up to the two headed monster of Apple-Android. Plus they came into a well established consumer market three years too late.

 

[Guytronic]

I've always been curious to see what may have happened with a much more aggressive marketing campaign promoting Windows phone.
Looking back Microsoft just hasn't been the type of company that felt the need to plaster it's name everywhere I guess.

Almost sure it's been stated that if MS wanted to bleed money why not blow $$ on advertising.

Heck if I hadn't stumbled across the T-Mobile 521 on Amazon I most likely never would have given the 'ole WP a second thought.
Actually I'm not sure I'd even be into smartphones today if I hadn't grabbed my first WP.

 

[EspHack]

This all started ten years ago when Steve Ballmer downplayed the impact the iPhone would have. If he would've seen it as a threat, Microsoft could've been more competitive instead of playing catch up to the two headed monster of Apple-Android. Plus they came into a well established consumer market three years too late.

that and they were pretty busy with vista back then

now I think nadella's plan is to get some form of x86 magic onto an actual phone, and get rid of the app problem by replacing apps with bots and even more reliance on the cloud

its simple really, imagine instead of http we had to download an app for ever webpage, a nightmare, right?, well that's mobile way of doing things for you

 

[Rosebank]

Its all relative, MS might be the dominating factor for the next 5 years, phones will be around until the end of time. MS have the ability to be top dog, its just a matter of when. Technology is now swinging much more in the favour of mobile computing, queue MS !!

 

[Neill Baldwin]

The one thing I always wondered was why Microsoft bought out the hardware part of Nokia and then just put out a few mid to low range phones, and two flagships, and do nothing with them as far as advertising or anything?

 

[Pinnsvein]

I think Nadella is only focused on one main thing: Microsoft Cloud
The problem is that Microsoft has always made its money mainly from Windows, Office and more recently Xbox.
They have been spending millions of $ on advertising the Microsoft Cloud but still most people do not understand what it is all about and the uniqueness of the Microsoft cloud compared to other services in the cloud.
Companies are not upgrading as often as before to new versions and having webbased tools does entail more security issues.
I think the Windows phone operating system is still better than Ios and Android for many reasons unless you need 146 flashlight apps.
I think Microsoft is heading in the wrong direction and the figures will start showing that quite soon....

 

[Krystianpants]

Yeah, I heard Nedella was against the Nokia purchase. It's a shame that Win Phone didn't make it.

The majority of the execs were against the purchase. Balmer threatened to resign if they didn't.

It was a bad idea because here he's building his own brand with Surface and then he purchases another brand and lets it maintain its low value association. A lot of people may have had the phones but ecosystem purchases were horrible because most people buying the cheapest phone they could get just to have a smartphone that is cheap. This is the same thing that is responsible for a lot of the high market share on android.. They need high sale numbers on flagship devices, the ones that are responsible for the majority of app store purchases. Again iphones make Apple way more money from the app store than Google gets from their massive market share. The biggest spenders are samsung flagship users or any other flagship brands. This is another reason Google is releasing flagship phones. If Samsung slowly moves away from Tizen it will lose Google a lot of money.

It was too late. Once enough users get one or the other, you're just known as the other brand. It's like trying to compete with Nvidia and AMD in the graphics world but offer the same if not worst experience. People will go with what they know is best. Most won't even know the other one exists unless it wows them with something. That's what MS needs to do.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

I think the phones that were released after the Nokia purchase were already in development by Nokia. They decided to follow through with releasing them because they wanted to continue to have a presence in the market and to have up to date phones for continual development of Windows 10 Mobile and have fans who really wanted them to help beta test the OS.
The last major advertising campaign for Windows phones failed because the market was already being dominated by iOS and Android. Many people do not have the technical knowledge to make a profound decision when buying a phone. They simply want what their friends and family have. If they happened to buy a Windows device, there is a good chance they returned it or switched to a different platform when they upgraded because they weren't able to use the apps their friends were using and because of all the negativity about the OS in the media.
At this stage it's become fairly apparent that Windows Mobile and Windows ARM will be combined and that Microsoft has conceded the smartphone market. If Microsoft does this right, a new market of ultra-portable PCs will be created with Windows ARM and those devices will be capable of voice and text as well. This would not directly replace smartphones but ultimately many people who just want 1 device for everything may want one of those and full computing power and either app developers will come back or they will emulate Android apps.

 

[DoctorSaline]

They have not. Windows 10 on phones has (potentially) eaten the behemoth that full windows 10 was with win32 emulation and (potentially) brought it to phones with Windows 10 on ARM.

 

[anon(6078578)]

I've always been curious to see what may have happened with a much more aggressive marketing campaign promoting Windows phone.
Looking back Microsoft just hasn't been the type of company that felt the need to plaster it's name everywhere I guess.

Almost sure it's been stated that if MS wanted to bleed money why not blow $$ on advertising.

Heck if I hadn't stumbled across the T-Mobile 521 on Amazon I most likely never would have given the 'ole WP a second thought.
Actually I'm not sure I'd even be into smartphones today if I hadn't grabbed my first WP.

The Lumia 521 was my first Touchscreen Smartphone. I'd had Symbian before and was already aware of Windows Phone but didn't want to spend that kind of money yet until I saw it was more viable. The Lumia 521 gave that excuse. I'm sure I'd have gone straight to Android otherwise.

I keep hearing that it's lack of flagship phones that were the problem. I think it was more a lack of consistent upgrade path for those of us using the lower end phones. The Lumia 640 should've been around when the 521 was reaching EOL in my opinion.

If Windows Phone had finally taken off, I would've seriously considered at least a mid tier device :smile:

 

[Chemy JMHT]

OK, I didn't read whole comments here, but what we certainly ignore is the fact they are partnering with a lot of people and then doing something weirdly different, like partnering with Oculus and then bringing news of others making the VR HMD for Windows 10, also the recent ability of Win10 to be installed on ARM devices and the same buying Nokia and not keeping the company running.

Maybe any time in a few months they just release a full loaded Windows 10 phone with the Surface line but with a deeper and better desktop integration, I don't think they gave up on Mobile since it looks like those devices will be the only devices around in a few years.

 

[Byrese]

Here's all u need to know. There's a part 2 and 3 to this.

http://m.windowscentral.com/windows-mobile-and-enterprise-part-i-out-sight-out-mind

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[speccy]

The biggest mistake they made was calling it "Windows". At the time the general public had a very low opinion of MS blaming them for the slowness of their PC's etc. when most of the time it wasn't actually anything to do with MS. Basically anything named Windows was doomed from the start, they should have called it something new and fresh sounding instead, it didn't resemble Windows on the desktop at all at the time, and so another name would have made more sense, I mean "Tiles" would have been the closest actual description, but that's too bland as well... In any case, it's history now, Microsoft were too late with their OS, and Nokia just became too cumbersome and couldn't move fast enough. Microsoft might have been able to save Nokia if their phone OS had been ready a year or two earlier.

Another PR fail was the move to Windows Phone 8. Those on Windows Phone 7 were told you couldn't get 8, but instead we're giving you 7.8 What they should have done is marketed 7.8 as 8 but with some features not available on older devices. This is basically what Apple do, they give the new phone OS to everyone but not all features are available on all devices, but they call an OS with missing features on certain devices by a different name. BTW I am not an Apple ******, I have never and will never own an iPhone, the only Apple thing I've eve owned is iPod shuffle about 14 years ago.