When choosing a mobile phone, nowadays we’re all used to choosing either iOS or Android devices. But ten years ago there was a third option, Microsoft’s Windows Phone. As we all know, that endeavour sank hard and as it turns out, giving up on it was a serious mistake CEO Satya Nadella recently admitted.
Talking to Business Insider recently, Nadella was quizzed on any strategic decisions that he now considers a mistake. He said: “The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO —was our exit of what I’ll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones.”
Who ya going to call…?
If you ever had a Windows phone then you may remember that the devices were fairly good, with a UI that used big bold tiles. However, the system barely caught on and Microsoft barely supported its mobile endeavour at the time.
While Microsoft officially killed the Windows Phone in 2017, the platform died years before. Its slow death began around 2015 when Nadella wrote off Microsoft’s $7.6 billion acquisition of Nokia. However, while he cast the final blow, he wasn’t solely to blame. Previous CEO’s Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates were also lacklustre in their attitude to mobile.
Ballmer said in 2013 – a year before Nadella took over – that: “I regret there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows [Vista] that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone. That is [the] thing I regret the most.”
In recent years Microsoft has re-entered the market with the Android-powered Surface Duo devices. The original is no longer supported whilst support for the Surface Duo 2 ends October 2024. A third iteration has yet to be confirmed.
Did you ever have a Microsoft Windows phone? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments below.
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