
Microsoft to Cut 2,850 More Jobs in Exit from Phone Business - peterkshultz
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/microsoft-to-cut-2-850-more-jobs-in-exit-from-phone-business
======
jtrip
The best part, Nokia gets shafted in all of this. Nokia got dragged along in
this clown show and we lose out on getting great hardware. Not to mention the
software side of things that drowned as Nokia got torpedoed. Here's hoping
they can rise from the ashes again. Maybe their spin off services like here
maps are a sign of life.

Edit: Maybe I speak from a position of ignorance about the industry. But I
also remember thinking how greatly awesome it would have been if I could run
Android on the new Lumia hardware. I also remember the fact that Nokia was
worth 30 bn before the new ceo, ex microsoft employee, came in and within
years it was left worth 9 bn; pop culture facts I suppose.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Nokia's software was garbage before and after Microsoft.

~~~
nickysielicki
Sure, but their hardware was always great and their software could have been
Android.

Look at HTC. What do they do besides great hardware? In the early days of
Android, they were the go-to vendor for a close-to-stock Android experience.
That could have been Nokia.

Now HTC is making the best VR headset and has a fairly bright future.

~~~
Analemma_
> Look at HTC. What do they do besides great hardware?

I'm looking at HTC - what I see is a company that did great with Android for a
short while, then got chewed up as Apple and Samsung ran away with the high
end of the market while the Chinese manufacturers gobbled up the bottom end.
All the "Nokia should've gone with Android!" comments I see around the
internet never try to explain how they think Nokia would've fared any better
than HTC (or Sony, or Motorola).

> Now HTC is making the best VR headset and has a fairly bright future.

You and I see HTC's future very differently. The Vive is the thread they're
hanging by, and as soon as Valve doesn't need them anymore, it's going to be
over ([http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/07/can-we-stop-
pretend...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/07/can-we-stop-pretending-
htc-has-a-future-in-vr/))

~~~
bad_user
I don't know about HTC Androids, but I've had about 3 Motorola phones and
they've been both expensive and low quality. That's not a winning combination,
irregardless of what your competition does.

For example I'm typing this on a Nexus 6 1st gen. A phone that when I bought
it, I had to replace it in warranty because the color temperature of the
screen was uneven and extremely annoying. And I paid at the time the price for
a high end phone and got a subpar camera, a screen that doesn't have the
contrast of other phones in its generation and a design that feels cheap and
bulky. Well, at least it has stock Android on it. I got basically fooled in
buying it, thinking it is a Nexus.

And I could say similar things about Sony. And about LG for that matter. For
instance LG had big hits in LG G3 and in Nexus 4 & 5\. My wife wanted an LG
G5, but apparently it gets overheated, with the customer rep telling us
they've had multiple returns. So she went with the Galaxy S7 Edge, because it
was the safe choice.

Here's the big problem: if we are talking about exceptional hardware, none of
these companies produce good products consistently. Do you know who does that?
Apple and Samsung. And back in the day Nokia as well.

~~~
Grazester
What do you even mean you got fooled in buying it thinking it is a Nexus? The
Nexus 6 had an OK camera previously the Nexus line up had terrible cameras.
[http://www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Google-Nexus-6-Google-s-
lates...](http://www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Google-Nexus-6-Google-s-latest-
handset-storms-in-to-the-DxOMark-Mobile-top-10)

------
Gustomaximus
I'm amazed MS have dont this with before a genuine attempt at phone that docks
and becomes your PVC.

Microsoft are so well placed to create and distribute what is bound to become
a popular from factor. This would work on so many levels. The light-weight
basic consumer that doesn't need a gaming/ or other high power rig at home.
Developing countries where people can't afford a laptop and high-end phone
could now get a phone plus a screen/keyboard at home. And the biggest sell is
at the enterprise level. Companies could issue phones only and have a heap of
docking stations. It wouldn't suit everyone but many would.

Time to re-visit Ubuntu Touch and see how they are getting along I guess.

~~~
skadamou
I have often wondered why MS hasn't been able to grab a significant chunk of
the smartphone market by courting enterprise. Most people don't care about all
the apps that are available to Android and Apple on their work phones and you
would think being able to run the same operating system across all of your
companies PCs and smartphones would be a major draw.

~~~
stephengillie
> _Most people don 't care about all the apps that are available to Android
> and Apple on their work phones_

You can see this clearly reflected in RIM...err...Blackberry's bottom line.

------
doomlaser
Steve Ballmer's infamous remarks on competition with Apple, after the iPhone
announcement in 2007:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)

"Let's take phones first. Right now, we're selling millions and millions and
millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months,
they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace, and,
let's see."

Times change.

~~~
Alex3917
And he was right, they had to substantially lower the price almost
immediately.

~~~
zbyte64
And also lacked a keyboard. I mean how do you check your email without a
keyboard?!?

~~~
Ezhik
I understand why people reacted the way they did.

Honestly, when iPhone first came out it was pretty much a toy. No apps? Even
dumbphones could run J2ME stuff!

It's only when iPhones got the App Store that things got serious.

But anyone who didn't see the danger of that "toy" running actual apps, or
didn't see the need to revamp their user interface to beat, ended up losing.

~~~
stouset
By "reacted the way they did" you mean "bought all of them as they hit the
shelves"?

Apple captured 20% of the smartphone market the first quarter the iPhone was
released, outselling Nokia, Palm, and Motorola _combined_.

Nobody was seemingly all that upset they couldn't play yet another crappy J2ME
version of "snake" that took 45 seconds to load. Roughly 0% of consumers knew
what the hell J2ME even was. They did, however, see a cell phone with an
actual web browser instead of some low-res, Javascriptless WAP disappointment.
Not to mention a YouTube client and a decent camera plus photo app.

------
cryptoz
Six years ago Microsoft held a funeral for the iPhone, saying that they would
have 80% market share and iPhone would have 2%. The main problem is arrogance.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-iphone-
funeral-2010...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-iphone-
funeral-2010-9)

~~~
iaw
When Bill Gates was at the helm he skated a fine line of legalities in order
to build a sustained monopoly. The ecosystem continued to evolve as his
priorities shifted away from Microsoft and none of his replacements were able
to adapt as dynamically as Bill did.

Ballmer is the pinnacle example of this arrogance without evidence attitude.
It's like the ghost of corporate Bill Gates will guide and give luck no matter
how stupid the decision they make.

It's sad because Microsoft could've evolved gracefully into a behemoth larger
than Apple and Google, if only there had been an ounce of humility after Bill
Gates left.

~~~
angstrom
As it stands Microsoft has basically become a staple commodity. Like proctor &
gamble peddling soap products Microsoft peddles products for small/medium
corporations. Xbox is the only thing keeping a foothold in the consumer space
anymore. But they continue to make predictable money at it.

~~~
pcwalton
Despite the way it seems living in San Francisco, Apple's market share on
desktop is under 10% (via browsing statistics). And Linux and Chrome OS have
nearly an order of magnitude less market share.

Windows is still, for all intents and purposes, completely dominant.

~~~
xenadu02
Yeah and half of all humans on the planet will own a smart phone within the
next 5 years. That's an order of magnitude more than will _ever_ own a
desktop/laptop. 1/3 or so will be iOS devices, around 1.5 billion and will
represent 90% of all profit available. iOS commands a huge lead in enterprise
sales, 75-80% in the US market.

Apple skated to where the puck was going, not where it already was. Microsoft
was too busy servicing the cash cow (and fomenting internal politics) to allow
any disruptions. They had already lost the next great battle the day the
iPhone was released.

Google's Android only survived because they pulled the mother of all pivots
the day of the iPhone announcement and immediately poured all their efforts
into copying iOS. (Remember: Android started life as a Blackberry clone!) None
of this is controversial - the original Android team members have confirmed it
in multiple interviews over the years.

What Microsoft is doing now is extremely smart. They know they lost the mobile
war and are moving on to the next battlefield: Cloud services. They're milking
Windows on the desktop as they make the transition but it's just a smoke
screen to buy time. Open sourcing technology, supporting Linux, etc are all
moves designed to get them customers for Azure. They'll now happily sell you
SQL Server for Linux licenses, or a subscription for Office on iPad.

~~~
oblio
Well, if we're talking about the long game, let's continue following that puck
:)

As smartphones become more and more popular, they reach further and further
down towards groups of people who can't afford iOS devices (unless you're
counting second hand devices). I don't really see Apple's % of the market ever
going up.

As the market matures and the hardware reaches "good enough" levels, the
overwhelming majority of smartphones used will be the equivalent of the "beige
boxes" of old (from the PC world). On top of that, the app competition is
becoming so cutthroat that app prices will probably continue to go down (per
app).

So, long story short: Apple will probably never enjoy a bigger share of the
smartphone market than it did in the past and most of the competition will be
around hardware and software with razor thin margins.

Meanwhile, more and more people from developing countries will start working
in companies which use overwhelmingly... Windows desktops and associated
software.

They will also use and pay for various services, some of which, as you noted,
will be hosted on... Azure.

Microsoft's main cash cows will never dry up. Companies want/are willing/are
able to pay for software.

I think that the longer term threat for Microsoft is Amazon, not Apple.

~~~
Gravityloss
If you're working on any cloud software backend, windows is probably your
third choice for development environment, and I see it really unlikely to
change.

I see office software being commoditized instead. Then even the business guys
can move off windows. If only google had some motivation improving docs. Maybe
that hits another cultural wall. An engineering driven company can't produce
tools for creating beautiful content.

~~~
oblio
Loaded content: how much software have you seen commoditized? Especially end-
user facing, professional and very complex content production software.

~~~
Gravityloss
As an example, at least for graph production, Excel seems to be the common
software. It's pretty hard to get decent looking stuff compared to some old
fashioned software that were used to create graphs earlier before that.

There used to be specialists doing the graphs for various printed materials.
Now it's all made by the marketers, consultants or number crunchers
themselves. Of course the quality has been so bad ever since that happened,
but nobody seems to care. Even designers don't really understand much about
graphs.

------
ocdtrekkie
It's sad if this happens, because I bought a used two year old Windows Phone,
and it's more pleasant to use than any phone on the market today. And given
that it gets updates the same day as desktop PCs, and doesn't wait for any
manufacturer or carrier approvals, is probably one of the most secure.

On my carrier, Verizon, we have almost no choices. There's iPhone, there's
three dozen identical Android phones with different brand names, and a couple
two year old Windows Phones. Not a lot of choice in the market now, and
certainly not going to get any better if Microsoft exits.

~~~
biocomputation
Also a Windows phone user, and I totally agree.

It's sort of amazing how nice it is to use. Super fast startup time, super
fast performance, very smooth user experience. Great camera. Not many apps,
but that's not a big deal for me.

I truly believe a lot of people would switch if they spent a week on one, but
that is never gonna happen.

------
dingo_bat
I don't care about Microsoft, but it's a real shame what happened to Nokia.
The phones were rugged, feature packed and were willing to sacrifice form in
order to gain function. They had thick, chunky phones just so the battery life
would be awesome.

~~~
shmerl
Jolla is the only thing that's left of that Nokia.

~~~
ommunist
Not the only! Yota2 phone with second e-ink screen on the back of the phone is
engineered by former nokians.

~~~
aedron
It's a really cool idea, the design is a big letdown for me though.

------
Fej
A long time coming. Microsoft failed to capitalize on smartphones before Apple
and Google and now they're paying the price.

That's their perennial problem. They had an app market, smartphones,
tablets... before the above, but they couldn't figure out how to sell them.

They could have been Apple.

~~~
bobajeff
>They could have been Apple.

Not really. What we called apps/smartphones/tablets before the iPhone/iPad was
not really the same thing.

~~~
tostitos1979
Did you ever use .net compact framework? It was actually decent from a
functionality standpoint (especially coming from a J2ME background). While it
was way better than what was out there, it was designed for corp usage. It
didn't have the design flare required to be a mass consumer product.

~~~
flukus
The UI toolkit was awful, lot's of fixed positioning makes supporting
different resolutions and aspect ratios almost impossible.

~~~
kalleboo
So... just like iOS?

~~~
flukus
I haven't done anything with iOS so I don't know if it's been resolved yet.
But for a long time iOS had the advantage of only running on a single device.
I believe the iPad had the same aspect ratio and could simply upscale the UI
at first too.

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah these days it's all fine after they got AutoLayout working, but
developers got lulled into "there's just one device size" that threes was a
minor panic when they expanded the line (and now with iPad multitasking you
need to handle basically any size)

~~~
tostitos1979
At the outset, there were a few devices with generally consistent screen sizes
... the compaq ipaq was very popular for instance .. so not too bad.

------
seesomesense
Branding them "Windows" phones was the kiss of death. Almost every adult has
had terrible experiences with Windows. The young view Windows as something
their grandparents used.

Calling it anything else would have been better.Even "Electric Candy" phones
would have been more attractive than "Windows" phones.

I understand that the phones were reasonably decent.

~~~
rogerbinns
They also tried (to some degree) your suggestion. Remember Microsoft Kin?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin)

| Kin was a short-lived mobile phone line from Microsoft designed for users of
social networking. Microsoft described the phones' target demographic as men
and women between ages 15 and 30.

~~~
xufi
I actually thought that was a cool idea when it came out but I always did
wonder what the purpose was if I wanted to do more. I was pretty focused on
getting a Blackberry ( _shudders_ ) at the time

------
hoi
Actually, Nokia Software was awesome. It was their usability and UX that was
dog awful. A lot of SW features that are around today have been around for a
decade with Nokia. They had a plan, to move over to Meego, which won awards..
but was torpedoed by Elop.

Elop destroyed Nokia, they had the best distribution network and supply
chains. Linking up with Elop instantly killed that and destroyed any goodwill
they had with operators and carriers who would have continued to back Nokia.
Unfortunately carriers are anti-Microsoft...

~~~
wvenable
> Nokia Software was awesome

Symbian, their bread and butter, was awful from beginning to end. The burning
platform memo from Elop was entirely right.

Microsoft could have been a strong 3 player but they kept rebooting their
platform ever 6 months.

~~~
robin_reala
Not from beginning, as the beginnings of Symbian was EPOC which was great.

~~~
wvenable
EPOC was designed for far less capable hardware than even pre-iPhone
smartphones. It allowed for a lot of capability on those early Psion devices.
But in modern hardware it was too fiddly and too alien (non-standard C++).

Microsoft always understood the consequences of Moore's law. Palm killed them
early on because Windows Mobile was just too much OS for those early devices.
But as hardware improved, Palm was left with a less capable OS and Microsoft
was ready. What they weren't ready for was Apple porting their desktop OS to
mobile.

------
samfisher83
Nokia went from the biggest cell phone maker in the world to being gone in
less than 10 years. Tech is pretty unforgiving.

~~~
colmvp
In 2006, if you were to make the prediction that Nokia, a company generating
41B in global sales, would be gone in a decade, you'd be downvoted to
oblivion.

~~~
rhblake
Gone from the cell phone business, sure, but certainly not gone as a company.
Big in telco equipment. After acquiring Alcatel-Lucent, I note that Nokia now
has roughly the same amount of employees as Microsoft...

~~~
pjmlp
And closed most of their European units moving them to cheaper countries....

That is what makes me angry at them, not whatever they did later with
Microsoft.

------
cbanek
I guess now my Windows Phone SWAG flashlight that I got when working there is
now a collectors edition.

I remember when we all saw the iPhone. A lot of us knew we were in trouble
when the execs kept going on about how only "enterprise customers" need a
smartphone, and how it's about selling Microsoft Exchange...

------
dvcc
I really wish the WP7 idea was fully executed, it seemed like they abandoned
the Metro idea midway. I feel like Metro (errr... ModernUI?) was a design
language that needed and still needs and all or nothing commitment otherwise
it ends up looking like Windows 8, a bit childish. The lack of commitment to
the design language and awful app adoption really killed it. Disappointing to
watch.

------
alxmdev
Article says Android and iOS have 84% and 15% respectively of the market. It's
still hard to sink in the fact of how strong a duopoly the mobile market is.
All of WP, Blackberry, Ubuntu, Sailfish, Tizen, and probably more, all share
the same 1%!

~~~
dexwiz
It's the lack of an app market. Why by hardware that only supports a fraction
of the software? Yes, most apps are crap, but for most app developers,
anything after Apple and Android are an afterthought.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The chicken and egg problem: Developers won't support your platform unless you
have enough users. Users won't buy your platform unless you have enough apps.
More than once companies including Microsoft have tried to break this issue by
outright buying developers, but the monopoly effect is way too strong.

A third party platform will fundamentally need to beat Android so badly on
platform features directly that app developers rush to it, users get excited
about it. The hype has to be real. Maybe that's HoloLens for Microsoft, maybe
it's someone else. But the admittedly incremental benefits Windows Mobile has
over Android aren't enough to break that monopoly power. Nothing about Tizen,
Ubuntu, Sailfish, etc. gets people talking about the cool amazing future of
technology.

~~~
dexwiz
It will have to be a new platform. VR is the likely next candidate. But I
don't think we will see widespread adoption until the units are self
contained.

------
jrnichols
I'm a long time Linux and Mac user, but over the past few years I've viewed
Microsoft as more of an ally... and a company that has so much potential to do
new and awesome things, but they just don't seem to know where to go. They
seem to be missing an opportunity to make a pretty great ecosystem with the
Xbox, Skype, Windows Phone, and Windows 10.

I've played with the Windows Phone at a new retail store and really liked it.
I'm almost wondering if they had gone for the retail stores earlier on if the
tide might have gone their way just a little bit more.

------
st3fan
When did they Exit from the Phone Business? Did that actually happen? I think
Microsoft Stores still showcase Windows Phones?

~~~
joeblau
They announced it back in May [1], but there was speculation that they were
exiting the phone business late last year. I think they still make 2 flagship
phones, but they aren't competing with iPhone/iOS or (10,000+ phones)/Android
anymore.

[1] - [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/25/microsoft-calls-time-
con...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/25/microsoft-calls-time-consumer-
phone-business/)

------
peter303
Nadella has been cleaning up Ballmer's poop. That will make Microsoft stronger
some day.

------
ljk
the day after the intern event with Seattle Center rented out for a private
concert...

~~~
steve-howard
You realize they do that every summer and it's part of their recruitment
pipeline?

