
Microsoft Must Keep Working on New Windows 10 Smartphones - CharlesDodgson
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2017/07/16/microsoft-windows10-mobile-smartphone-enterprise-future/#30a5058b2337
======
CharlesDodgson
Just wondering does anyone else feel this article is slightly deluded.
Microsoft's 'Mobile strategy' has not really a strategy, but more a blind rush
to catch up with others in the market, and when that failed to offer core
Microsoft solutions through cloud apps. Surface devices are form factors that
Microsoft has a better track record and confidence with. It certainly executed
those projects better than any phone. I really feel it has given up on
handsets, and more interested in owning icons on the home screen.

What say you?

~~~
brudgers
People forget Microsoft has been building mobile operating systems for about
twenty years. [1] [2] It was not caught out by the technology of the iPhone so
much as it was caught out by Apple's ability to dictate changes to the
wireless carriers on its own terms -- for me, the real revolution of the
iPhone is that it made mobile data cheap and widespread.

I believe Microsoft is playing the long game in regard to mobile and that that
long game is based on the assumption that a mobile phone is just another
Turing/Von Neumann device, not something magical or a content delivery
appliance. This is why Microsoft has spent the past decade or so converging
its operating systems and more importantly development tools to be cross
platform. For Microsoft, a mobile device is just another computer. Unlike
Google and Apple, it has a strategy that does not depend on lipsticking a pig
(at least in so far as both Google and Apple are tasked with trying to
convince people that a mobile phone operating system makes a good
laptop/desktop operating system (whether or not Windows is a pig is another
matter))...and Microsoft is putting out a 'mobile phone on a laptop' OS for
anyone who thinks its a good idea.

One of the fundamental differences with Microsoft's approach is that unlike
Google and Apple, Microsoft is primarily a B2B company and its consumer sales
are a byproduct. From a business standpoint, the Windows stack reaches from
embedded devices to data centers. Mobile is just a small piece of that stack
and it is primarily consumer facing. Microsoft's mobile strategy is in part to
provide tools so that its customers can develop mobile apps across platforms.
The hardware and consumer device products are valuable from a research
perspective. 10 million Windows phones in the wild every year provides a lot
of useful field data directly to Microsoft.

Twenty years ago, Apple was playing catch up with Microsoft in terms of mobile
computing. Ten years ago Google was playing catch up with Nokia. And so was
Apple. And if someone had posed a similar question, the conventional wisdom
would have been everyone needed to catch up with RIM. Microsoft like Apple is
trying to skate to where the puck is going...except it is more focused on the
B2B side.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact)

~~~
CharlesDodgson
I guess you are probably correct, Microsoft, may have dropped the ball on
mobile and got beat to certain milestones by Apple, but that doesn't mean it
is out.

I sued to use windows mobile , on surveying equipment and it always felt a bit
archaic and clunky, but it did work and was he best solution for many years.

Guess they want to keep a horse in the race.

