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Nokia-Dead

Today, Microsoft announced that it'southward effectively killing the last vestiges of the Nokia assets it bought for $7.1 billion three years ago. After selling the feature phone business concern to Foxconn last week for $350 million, and firing 7,800 people last twelvemonth, Microsoft is firing 1850 people (1,350 from Finland, 500 elsewhere) and substantially exiting phone hardware birthday.

Oh, it's not technically out of the game — information technology notwithstanding wants to focus on enterprise devices and bring new products to market. But with most all of its acquired employees gone, its feature telephone business organization jettisoned, and Windows 10 Mobile at present reduced to less than one% market place share, it's 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 limited to companies valuing our delivery to security, manageability, and Continuum, and with consumers who value the same. Thus, we need to be more than focused in our phone hardware efforts… [Due west]e're scaling back, but we're not out!"

It'south really hard at this point to meet just how Microsoft isn't out of the telephone business. "Scaling back" and "streamlining" are great euphemisms, merely no i is buying Windows 10 Mobile devices. Rumors of a "Surface Phone," at this bespeak, brand little sense. No 1 is pushing to buy such a device, and no one is waiting on Microsoft to deliver the all-in-one platform across all devices that the company has spent decades edifice.

BloomIsOff

Whatever bloom existed on this particular rose, it's expressionless at present. Also, does anyone else think Steve Ballmer looks similar a badly programmed animatronic version of himself?

The tragedy hither is that at that place was a time when consumers might arguably take been hungry for such products. In the early on, pre-iPhone smartphone era, Windows Mobile (not to exist confused with Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile) was built on Windows CE and mimicked many features of the Windows UI, but shrunk them to a tiny screen that simply worked with a stylus. Back then, there might have been a apparent statement to be made that consumers actively wanted mobile devices with piece of cake access to documents, files, data, 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 company's early dismissal of the iPhone.

Microsoft has accomplished something unique in its efforts with Windows 10 — an OS that, for the first time, truly unites mobile and desktop products. One time the Xbox One runs Windows 10, it'll have accomplished a seamless OS across all three major platforms. The only problem is, very few people in mobile actually care nigh its signature achievement.

Focusing on enterprise and concern users is exactly the wrong tack to take hither. Enterprise users aren't going to salve BlackBerry, and they aren't going to relieve Microsoft, either. The company'south mobile operating organization is dead, whether it builds a Surface Phone or not, not because there'due south annihilation wrong with Windows x Mobile, but considering consumers and companies have already voted, and they've voted no.

Just as Intel failed to achieve market success in mobile, then has Microsoft. If it had taken this step with Windows Phone 7 or fifty-fifty 8, information technology might accept been dissimilar — but Windows ten Mobile is likewise little, too belatedly.