Microsoft halts development of Windows 10 Mobile
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Battlefieldprin
They should not be shy and stop it all together. it is a big waste of time. I am going to throw my Nokia sooon.
Kaarme
The price of this failed experiment was quite phenomenal, but from my, and my countrymen's, pov the real price of it was Nokia's downfall. I'm not going to accuse MS of that since it was Nokia's own stupidity to jump on that ship (or rather to hire Elop the Infiltrator who orchestrated it), but if MS had never attempted, Nokia would have naturally ended up with Android. I reckon it would still be among the big 5 phone manufacturers. MS itself has probably earned back the money it lost there from its cloud business and other such stuff.
AsiJu
^ what he said.
I hope Nokia's new Android phones sell well but the damage is already done, so to speak.
Nokia's downfall began in the 90s if rumours are true. Apparently Nokia already had a concept for a design similar to iPhone but some genius decided it wasn't feasible and was scrapped.
I wonder if Apple would agree...
rl66
This is quite normal, month before they stop mobile hardware they boosted the Android dev's ressource...
Now you have nearly all M$ on both Android and iOS (and on both they started to make to make really good app like Pix, lens, arrow...
With the poor sale of Lumia despite real quality (950 and 950XL were very good) it was logical to drop W10 Mobile and focus on more profitable Android and iOS even more when M$ still earn money with patent used by Google and Apple within their OS (it was a big deal for M$).
Loobyluggs
Developers developers developers developers!
BLEH!
Disappointing, but entirely unexpected. I jumped to Android. No complaints. Do miss the Cortana, Continuum and a few other smaller features though. The 950 was a great phone in terms of hardware for what you got. Will repurpose that as a camera now I guess.
Solfaur
Well, I had a Nokia Lumia 1320 for over 3 years. When I first got it in 2014 I was still on Windows 8.1 on my PC and the phone was running the same version and all synced up nicely. It was then I also got into OneDrive which came very handy in some occasions. Overall I really liked the design and familiarity of it, however the apps were so few and buggy (for example facebook messenger stopped working months ago and couldn't fix it for the life of me) that it really limited everything a modern smartphone does. I kind of felt like a special unicorn (not really in a good way) since pretty much 99% of the phones around me were Android/iOS. But yes, it's pretty much dead now, they didn't even bother to update the 1320 to Windows 10...
I got a OnePlus 5 some weeks ago and it's night and day, literally. Super fast hardware, super fast apps and variation of apps, incredible display quality etc. etc. I feel like I finally caught up. 🙄
One thing is sure though, if Microsoft tried harder, and more specifically would have acted SOONER, I'm sure they could have kept up with Androd/iOS just fine. They did too little, too later however.
vbetts
Moderator
Whelp, the 5 people that have Windows 10 Mobile are shedding a tear.
Joking aside, kind of sad to see. Microsoft entered the race too late, didn't support it enough, didn't keep features up, they let it die basically. It could have had a good place in say the business market.
Funny thing is when Satya Nadella around the time he took over as CEO of Microsoft, he stated the smartest phone is an iPhone with Microsoft Services, then an Android with Microsoft Services, then an Android with Google services lol.
ubercake
Golly Gosh! What will this ever mean for the UWP?
At any rate, when 3rd parties didn't develop the plethora of basic apps missing from the Windows phone ecosystem, MS didn't even step up and do it themselves. They've shown a lack of commitment to the phones for the years they've been around.
With everything else they've tried, they still only seem really committed to the Windows OS and MS Office.
How long will Surface hardware continue to be produced? They seem to ditch hardware much more quickly than their other efforts Zune, Band, Surface RT, etc..
RzrTrek
Not a day too soon.
ruiner13
Their users are going to be pissed. Both of them.
Clouseau
Can this at least translate to the one size fits all experience across devices can be halted or does across devices just apply to Xbox and desktop now? If they threw in the towel on phones, when will they concede on tablets? Have not looked into their market share for tablets but see far more Android and iOS tablets in use. Rarely a Surface pops up. Then again a windows phone was even more rare.
waltc3
Ballmer almost sunk the company by simply not having a clue what he should do next. If Yahoo! had had any sense it would have taken Ballmer's ridiculously absurd offer of $40B and run. Ironically, it may have been the Yahoo! founder's hatred of Microsoft that caused him to reject the offer and in the process saved Microsoft's bacon! Ballmer damn near sunk the company almost single-handedly. Copying Apple was absolutely the very worst thing Ballmer should have done! But that's the sort of thing you do when you don't have a clue as to what you should do next. Ballmer, it seemed, was entirely ignorant of the Windows marketplace and Microsoft's customer base. Never put a sales guy at the top of a software company, imo!
DLD
From the very beginning of the winmobile adventure, I pitied naive people who put their trust into the "new platform". M$ simply bought the glory of the Nokia brand and tricked customers one more time. Deceptive marketing suggested that win-all-mighty plus Mighty Nokia equals superb phones. Instead, Nokia hardware was devalued with incompetent op system made by a omnipresent software bully...
StewieTech
I think this news like upset, like, fifty people no joke!
But really they got late in the game, the competition was fierce and they made so many mistakes. They had to retreat now, it is a lose battle.
schmidtbag
Though I don't like MS and avoid their products whenever possible, I have heard Windows phone was actually a pretty good OS, and I can see why. It just lacked the app support. I often wonder how different things would be today if Windows phone was released just before Android got popular. What I do know is we'd have a lot fewer cheap options, and I suspect iOS would have fewer features than it does today - neither MS or Apple are very innovative when it comes to minor details. They may be good at promoting future tech (like biometrics or wireless charging), but sometimes it's the little things that people like more.
I can't quite figure out Nadella. At times he seems extremely biased, at others he seems brutally honest and realistic. Sometimes he seems like a decent person, while other times he seems like a real douchebag. I'd argue he has the potential to be a better businessman than Gates, but he seems to be a little too opinionated for that to ever happen; Gates was wise in being quiet about his thoughts. All that being said, I can't really tell what was going through his mind when he said that. It's not exactly a stupid remark but it wasn't the smartest one, either.
Barry J
Keeping my windows 10 phone until it dies as I love it, I have tried android and iphones but prefer windows 10 phones
Serotonin
I loved my Windows 8.1/10 phone. Still say its hand's down the best U.I of a mobile device. Those tiles were awesome. If only it had at least the key apps, but when you don't even have something like snapchat...you're not gaining any ground.
I think some may read too much into this and assume Microsoft is bowing out of the cell phone market, but in reality, I think this means they're bowing out of the ARM market. I can still see them making the rumored Surface phone.
schmidtbag
I agree. MS's ARM efforts have largely been a failure, and I think this primarily was due to marketing, in terms of both getting people to understand what it is, and, making it fit for their target market. They called it "Windows" despite it not being compatible with any Windows software, and that confuses a lot of people. They didn't attempt to create any compatibility layers. The desktop version was too heavy for the CPU and RAM. From what I recall, you also had to buy a separate MS Office license for it. Though I never checked, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't have any Windows CE support either. Even Linux on ARM has more compatibility with Windows software.
H83
I think the real problem is that MS wanted to dominate the mobile market the same way they dominate the desktop market and for that purpose they allied to the other company who wanted to the same but on the hardware front: Intel. The problem is that both of them fucked up really hard! They failed to realise that they had real competition in the mobile market contrarily to what happens in the desktop market and they aren´t used to face strong competition... So Intel failed to deliver a CPU good and cheap enough for smartphones while MS failed to deliver a good and cheap OS... Then MS bought Nokia in a desperate attempt to become relevant and that was their worst possible option because they´ve lost the support from OEMs who still believed in WM and then all of them turned to Android only exclusively...
So finally we reached the end that everyone was expecting. Amazing how guys that earn millions every year can fuck up this bad...
