Microsoft CEO Admits Giving Up on Windows Phone and Mobile Was a Mistake (theverge.com) 119
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is the third chief executive of the software giant to admit the company has made some serious mobile mistakes. From a report: Satya Nadella took over from former CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014 and, just over a year later, wrote off $7.6 billion related to Microsoft's acquisition of the Nokia phone business. In an interview with Business Insider, Nadella admitted that Microsoft's "exit" from the mobile phone business could have been handled better. Asked about a strategic mistake or wrong decision that he might regret, Nadella responds: "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."
Windows 8 was the problem (Score:3)
It was based on Windows 8. By the time the Windows 10 version of Windows Phone came out, it was really good but already doomed. They pulled the plug about a year early.
Re:Windows 8 was the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It was NOT based on Windows 8. IT was vice versa. The tiled UI was absolutely amazing on mobile. The problem was when Microsoft tried to just move that to the desktop for some stupid reason.
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And the tiled UI was fine on a laptop in tablet mode. It still wasn't as good as 10 - neither mobile nor desktop
Re: Windows 8 was the problem (Score:2)
The tiles were lame on every platform. They just flip around with often zero indication for what each is even for, (I still remember Windows 8 had a big wide purple field with a trophy icon on it, with no text whatsoever and I still don't even remember what it was for either) and if you tap on something (say a calendar item or email) all it did was open the app, not what you tapped on.
Android did a much better job from the beginning with widgets. They have scrollable items so you don't have to wait for what
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My favorite part was when my careful arrangement of tiles would just reset to factory default for no fucking reason. Usually the result of an update or some user profile glitch. I gave up on tiles completely and only used the start screen to type the name of an application into search, then launch it.
Before folks decide to respond that "it worked fine for me": I don't care. It didn't work for me.
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Ironically, in Microsoft's most recent response to community requests for Windows 11 enhancements, they acknowledged that a lot of people wanted them to bring back tiles in the start menu. Apparently a lot of people really liked them.
Which suggests that Windows 8's problem was not the tiles, but the start screen. If it had just been a Windows 10 style menu, people would have been happy. Removing the start icon, and making the corners of the screen perform important actions with no indicators, caused a lot o
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That's exactly correct. The tiles were never an issue, though in 8, they were not implemented in a useful way in all but a small number of apps.
Being able to make an icon big or small and arrange them in lots of different was is pretty great in Windows 10. From a UX perspective, they are an amazing design: they expose information you'd normally have to click further to get all (set Weather to large size), whilst being easy to configure, and since they stayed where you put them even if you added new icons,
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The reason was fear. Specifically, they saw statistics that said people were buying more smartphones than PCs, and they went into a panic because "Oh noes if nobody ever buys a computer again, we are dead!" Because they suspected that all seven of the people who were using Windows Phone, were probably Microsoft employees. So they concluded that they needed to get more people to be familiar with Windows Phone
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I worked at Microsoft doing WinRT apps a few years before they killed WP. That pretty much sums up the thinking at the time.
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I had a Windows 10 tablet, and the interface seriously sucked. Happily moved over to a Nexus 7 and saw just how terrible Microsoft's notion of a mobile UI was.
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Forcing devs to rewrite their apps (a lot did not) and the users saw that their phones could not upgrade and were left behind.
If you are the newcomer you can't pull that crap. Developers might have been willing to make an app for the third platform, but having to rewrite it afterwards?
Then you are just out.
And it did not help that their development-tools were Windows only.
iOS tools were Apple only, but Apple has enou
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Yes, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are based on Windows Phone 7. I don't think they ported the GUI from 7 to 8 though - it just looks the same. They moved Windows Phone to the NT kernel and just created the modern/Metro framework new for 8.
It's not like Win32 APIs are not full of buggy, bloated legacy code. Creating a new API for the unified platform was more about not having to push the old stuff to the phone but made a unified platform to develop for.
They may have been dumb enough to think they would dr
No. Not really (Score:1)
Windows phone has always been a pretty appearance but shit for actual tech.
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Windows phone has always been a pretty appearance but shit for actual tech.
WTF are you talking about? The tech was amazing, at least after they junked Windows CE. It was slick, fast as hell, and had an awesome tiled UX (which were amazing on mobile). And dang, it looked incredible compared to iPhone or Android.
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WTF are you talking about? The tech was amazing,
https://mobile.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
https://communities-dominate.b... [blogs.com]
There are more. I seem to recall reading that Windows Phone only had one volume control, so you could not adjust the volume of the phone's speaker separately from the volume of an attached Bluetooth device, or perhaps it was that you could not adjust the notification volume separately from the media volume.
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Very early Windows Phone had only one volume control but that was fixed. I never owned one that didn't.
Re:No. Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
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WTF are you talking about? The tech was amazing, at least after they junked Windows CE. It was slick, fast as hell, and had an awesome tiled UX (which were amazing on mobile).
You forgot to mention all the fun you could have "squirting" at your friends!
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Nit only was it incredible, it was incredible enough to impress Steve Jobs, who apparently wasvdeeply fascinated by it. The minimalism also inspired him to get Apple to get Johnny Ive to drop his skeuomorphism horrorshow.
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Windows CE mobile when it came out was a horrible UX.
It was like someone said "Let's put windows on a mobile device" but had never used a smart phone in their life.
They did better later, but damage was done, at least for me.
The only thing worse was the Nokia NGage. (Sadly owned that as well).
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Windows Phone after CE was a completely different beast, with esentially no code in common besides the NT kernel. Virtually no one outside the business world ever used CE, to my knowledge, and when people talk about Windows Phone, they really aren't talking about CE.
No sales incentives (Score:1)
Microsoft didn't do that. So their phones were relegated to the deepest, darkest dungeons of any product offering.
I remember when Sony forced Best Buy to carry the PSP "Go", the one that didn't take physical media. They wouldn't send Best Buy PS3s (which were highly profitable for them) unless they sold the Go, but that meant
Huge mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe Windows Phone was before the One Microsoft initiative, and was a victim of infighting among different teams.
Having used all three, I maintain Windows Phone had some great ideas, a slick design language, and better usability than Android and iOS at the time. It was very pro-user in some ways, like allowing carrier-installed software to be uninstalled and attempting to merge all your social media into a uniform messages app.
It was interesting seeing Microsoft in a mode of trying to gain ground through simply making better tech, because it was one area where they couldn't effectively leverage their existing marketshare.
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They misread what consumers wanted (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft based their entire Windows Phone design paradigm around the idea that smartphone use was a distraction to be minimized so you could get on with life. They even ran several commercials to that effect. Microsoft was completely oblivious to the fact that the majority of customers didn't want that, they specifically wanted a portable idiot box that they could stare at specifically to ignore real life.
To have succeeded, Microsoft would've needed 3rd party app developers to port over all every popular time sink video game and doom scrolling social media app that the competition had. Even if Microsoft had gotten its act together much earlier, I can't imagine a scenario where developers would've found it worth the effort to support a platform with such a small market share.
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In a "box that is idiotic" sense, or "box that belongs to an idiot" sense? (Both, of course.)
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Maybe Microsoft ran a few commercials to that effect, but I never saw that in any of their designs. It was just a mobile OS, though a better designed one than iPhone and Android, by far.
I believe those ads were a marketing way around the fact that they couldn't attract developers to a third platform. So "apps are a distraction!"
Re: They misread what consumers wanted (Score:2)
Now that it's possible to run Android apps on Windows, they could stand a chance. I have a slight hope for a come back, because I don't like duopolies.
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It did what it had to do and it ran smooth.
Developers might have been willing to support a third OS and a lot did.
BUT forcing to use your desktop OS to develop for your phone-OS & then even changing the SDK?
That is just digging your grave.
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Microsoft was completely oblivious to the fact that the majority of customers under 35 didn't want that, they specifically wanted a portable idiot box that they could stare at specifically to ignore real life.
FTFY
Pre-dates the iPhone (Score:4, Informative)
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I started my career as a programmer building software for Windows CE and PalmOS. I rather liked Windows Mobile because I could print and get a tolerable web experience basically the moment I powered it on. It had functional file management, something iOS still can't manage.
Re:Pre-dates the iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
It had functional file management, something iOS still can't manage.
Yeah, that's none, and five seconds [apple.com] on Google would tell you that.
What I assume you're actually bitching about is the sandbox approach iOS takes to files, meaning each app has its own sandboxed file structure. That structure is manageable via the files app and this is done for very obvious security reasons. It annoys people who want to see a root file system but it is the correct choice for 99% of consumers. Android works the same way, except, Android makes it easier to shoot yourself in the foot by blindly granting file permissions to apps that have no legitimate need for them. In iOS, you can open documents from files in apps (e.g., Excel) that handle those document types, and you can share files between apps with the sharing mechanism.
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Android supports both models. Most apps just stick everything on a data partition but apps can certainly have their own files which aren't accessible to other apps.
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The bigger issue is that some people expect their phone to work like the office filing cabinet that their great great granddaddy used in the late 1800s. If it's not file / folder with everything visible, some people say there's "no file management".
You see similar arguments with people saying that users don't know how to navigate a file system on a PC. That's asking the wrong question, the question which needs to be asked is "can a user use the tool to get done what they want to get done?" Everything else i
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Can you just connect via USB or FTP, copy some audiobooks onto your phone in a folder you made, and listen to them with your favourite app? You can on Android.
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I have no idea why he liked it so much. He had to restart it regularly.
Not from my perspective (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they should make the mistake of getting out of the OS market.
For those of us developing at the time... (Score:2, Interesting)
For those of us developing at the time, it was a constant frustrating cycle of learning a platform, then they'd wipe that out for a new one, rinse, repeat. Windows CE, Windows Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, then Windows Phone. I had enough and left it before MS dropped it. Android was very welcome, just for the development consistency that evolved instead of nuked and replaced with something else questionable.
As a user, I admit it was fun to try out new pocket tech when it was released. I still have an NEC mono
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Absolutely Not a Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft couldn't let go of the idea that all of their ecosystems (music player, smartphone, tablet, desktop/laptop) had to use the exact same UI and it was dragging down the desktop/laptop market to an extreme. The bones of Windows 8 weren't bad, but using it's unified, multi-platform UI was horrible. Microsoft was under the severely mistaken impression that (1) the touch interface was superior to the keyboard/mouse interface and (2) full screen, non-customizable menus would be a welcomed UI change after 30 years of desktops, icons, and start buttons.
Completely abandoning pocket devices was necessary to rid Microsoft of the idea that the touch interface scaled. IF they decide to have another go at smart devices, I hope they do so with the understanding that their desktop environment has proven successful and they shouldn't mess with it.
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Microsoft couldn't let go of the idea that all of their ecosystems (music player, smartphone, tablet, desktop/laptop) had to use the exact same UI and it was dragging down the desktop/laptop market to an extreme.
Unfortunately, at times it seems Apple is hell-bent on repeating this mistake.
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Unfortunately, at times it seems Apple is hell-bent on repeating this mistake.
Apple has an uncanny ability to get away with things the market would completely reject if the box said "Microsoft" on the side. I believe this is the origin of the reality distortion field theory.
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The difference being, Apple fans are far more accustomed to being told what they want than Windows fans, who appear to believe they should have some input into the matter.
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Microsoft was under the severely mistaken impression that (1) the touch interface was superior to the keyboard/mouse interface and (2) full screen, non-customizable menus would be a welcomed UI change after 30 years of desktops, icons, and start buttons.
I think you give them too much credit. Much simpler version is that Windows 8 is what happens when you allow UI/Usability experts to run things.
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Incompetent UI experts. Every UI expert I know thought Windows 8 was an abomination to UI design.
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The Windows 8 start screen actually made a lot of sense - most users have their app icons crapped all over their desktop by the installer, and launch them from there rather than the start menu. The menu was always a mess. Even if the user figured out how to enable alphabetical ordering, often apps were hidden inside folders named after the publisher, and mixed in with random documentation and web links to accidentally click on. The desktop had a simple shortcut to the app itself, with and people are good at
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Yes it looked dumbed down, but on the other hand there was a PEBCAK issue of most people being clueless to the fact that the 'start screen' that Win8 was showing didn't stop them from just typing the first few characters of the thing they were looking for and showing the results. Much more efficient than trying to manually scroll and navigate through different levels of that horrendous thing known as the 'start button'.
There has been a long techbro tradition (dating back at least to Jobs and the original Mac) of thinking "I like this and what I like is the best way and everyone else should not have any other options"). This hobbled the original Mac in a number ways beyond just the limits of the tech of the day. Micro$oft's insistance that every device have the same UI is a repeat of this often sung refrain. And the poster above, which I quoted, is yet another iteration. Yeah - everyone is too stupid to remember every prog
Re: Absolutely Not a Mistake (Score:2)
Good. (Score:2)
Now can you stop trying to turn windows into the worst parts of android?
Locked down (Score:3)
Windows Phone Was Untenable (Score:3)
Microsoft's real problem (Score:2, Troll)
The real problem with Microsoft is they don't know how to develop a new operating system. NT, the underpinnings of all versions of Windows since Windows NT, was acquired from their dealing with IBM and OS/2. Windows 1.x - 9x/Me were nothing but big DOS shells. WinCe (yeah, that made everyone wince) was just the turd Windows 3.1 "polished" for mobile devices. So, instead of creating a true mobile OS they try to force feed everyone a phone interface with Windows 8 and then carry that crap on to later versions
Re:Microsoft's real problem (Score:5, Informative)
What you call "WinCe," that is, "Windows CE," was absolutely not a "Windows 3.1 'polished.'" Windows CE was a clean-room implementation of the Windows API on an original kernel.
Even the most simple web search could have told you this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also, the book "Inside Microsoft Windows CE" goes into this in great detail.
Windows CE is not Windows 3.1 nor is it WIndows NT. It is a completely original operating system with the Windows API.
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Everything you say is true. But you miss the most important aspect of WinCE. It was the most unreliable OS I've had the misfortune to come across. Win95 was a rock compared to it. Rebooting your phone / portable PC was at last a daily chore, but often closer to hourly.
They eventually fixed that by moving to the NT kernel. The result was amazingly good at the basics - very smooth even on a gutless CPU's and it had excellent battery life for the day. Some here didn't like the UI, but it wasn't the cut d
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What you call "WinCe," that is, "Windows CE," was absolutely not a "Windows 3.1 'polished.'" Windows CE was a clean-room implementation of the Windows API on an original kernel.
Ah the Windows CeMeNT days. CE, ME, and NT.
That was exactly what they thought they were doing (Score:3)
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.
At the time, that was precisely what they thought they were doing. They half-assed Windows Mobile, and then got caught off guard when Android and iOS largely took over the market by the time Microsoft even tried to react seriously with Windows Phone 7.
When "new skin on Windows Mobile" didn't work, they decided to throw the PC experience under the bus to "reinvent" computing across PCs, Tablets, and Phones.
Ultimately the truth was that they made their 'serious' effort two years after Android and iOS had basically carved up the market, and there wasn't much room in the market for Microsoft. Microsoft had no value prop beyond what Android already promised and Android was first in the market. Just like how OS/2 and BeOS didn't have a chance in the face of the market already having settled on Windows. Despite any technical assessment putting home desktop OS/2 or BeOS ahead of Windows 9x, the market had decided and it'd take something unbelievable to dent that reality. Microsoft is just on the losing side of such a barrier.
Could have saved mobile (Score:3)
I like this " 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."
So, all they had to do was come up with a new paradigm, which we haven't seen even now, to make it work, and he's confident that they could have made it work.
Ugh. These people! If that's the attitude no wonder there are so many failures.
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I like this " 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."
So, all they had to do was come up with a new paradigm, which we haven't seen even now, to make it work, and he's confident that they could have made it work.
Ugh. These people! If that's the attitude no wonder there are so many failures.
To be fair, it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. My android phone has virtually zero integration with my Ubuntu desktop, and from the little I played with iPhone / Apple it's not much better there. Files, email, and pictures are generally available on both through the cloud, but I could envision a much tighter integration where you're actively able to control / check in on one device from the other. That kinda effort is something that really only Apple or MS are well positioned to do.
Ya, but ... (Score:2)
It's still fun to watch the (lame) Windows phone (and tablet) product placements in old TV shows like Bones, Castle, Elementary, etc... and see characters clicking on those tiles ...
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Clearly you never used Windows Phone. Tiles were amazing on that form factor, and holy crap they looked incredible. I used silver with transparency, and my friends' jaws would drop when I showed them those animations!
Windows phone was reactionary (Score:3)
Giving up on Windows phone was not a mistake. The real mistake was that windows phone was entirely reactionary. By the time it came out, apple and android were already too dominant. App developers weren't interested in such a small market, and companies like Google weren't going to make windows phone versions of popular apps like YouTube unless they would lose out on significant traffic.
The mistake happened in 2007 when Steve Ballmer made fun of the iPhone and dismissed it completely. He should have seen the writing on the wall of where consumer tech was headed.
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Many Microsoft products were originally reactionary.
Microsoft Windows was a reaction to Mac OS.
Internet Explorer was a reaction to Netscape Navigator. Though IE is gone now, it did dominate the browser wars and put NN out of business.
XBox was a reaction to Nintendo and PlayStation.
Sometimes, being reactionary works.
The Windows Phone Tile interface was a masterpiece (Score:2)
The Windows Phone's Tile interface was a masterpiece in mobile interface simplicity and took advantage of the user's intuition while efficiently getting you where you needed to be.
It was first developed on the Zune. I miss it. There are a few Android launchers that emulate it.
The irony here is that the official Microsoft Android launcher does not use Tiles at all.
Microsoft Identity Crisis (Score:2, Troll)
Microsoft doesn't innovate, they buy license or steal technology. They are a "technology bank". Even the CEO says "We could have innovated, but we didn't". Thats true throughout the history of the company. They bought Halo, Flight Simulator, Teague made the MS Optical Mouse, and Bing Chat is a reskin of ChatGPT. Windows was stolen and most of its iterations were additional theft. So to think this outfit will actually sit down and figure out how to make a unique and popular product is a fools errand. Not onl
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that was not the mistake (Score:3)
Changing the API used to develop apps for Windows Mobile three times in three years was the mistake.
Once made, the only rational thing to do due to the effects was to shut it down.
Steve Ballmer is literally smarter than Satya nadella. At least he understood the value of DEVELOPERS!
Giving up on mobile wasnt the mistake (Score:2)
Trying to force the windows desktop UI and workflow onto small screen phones was the mistake.
A mistake for who? (Score:2)
A mistake for Microsoft is a win for the rest of humanity.
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Exactly, Nokia made the mistake by getting in bed with MS. The value was lost there, I don't shed a single tear for microsoft.
XML killed it (Score:2)
The UI definition language (XAML) was a disaster. It was when the world just transitioned away from XML to JSON and other easier to use formats, but Microsoft sticked with it. Developers (x3) looked at it and said NOPE.
They made a lot of mistakes (Score:3)
The made a lot of mistakes handling the Windows Phones, and exiting might have been one of the "milder" ones.
Before their blunders, one after another, there was a time when "Smart Phone" meant Windows Phone. I think they might have even had a trademark for it. There was practically no competition at the time. The Nokia "communicator" devices and similar ones from Ericsson and others had very limited software support on the Symbian platform. Or, many even ran Windows. There was Blueberry, yes, but outside of corporate, it did not have much life.
Their first problem was of course Windows CE trying to copy the "big sister desktop Windows" a bit too much. Anything that came with a touchscreen required a stylus and a start menu.
Their second mistake was abandoning two separate generations in a row. When they switched from Windows Phone 6.5 to Windows 7, people were upset. But they understood it would be an entirely new platform. Not receiving any upgrade path for otherwise excellent hardware (HTC HD2, which ironically ran Android as an alt-os thanks to the community), was really upsetting. But people gave Microsoft one change. Then they alter abandoned all those Windows 7 devices for Windows 8, and that broke the trust in the company entirely. None of the competition, even Nokia on Symbian does that.
And final mistake? Focused on hardware, which is not their strongest suit, but not on hardware as much. Spending 7 billion on software agreements, and developer ecosystem would have gone a longer way than trying to save the failing Nokia ship. (They do make cool hardware like mice, keyboard, or even the Xbox, but those are separate divisions).
Anyway, doing one blunder after another, they decided to exit the market. It was not like people did not give them a chance, it was more of Microsoft squandering the goodwill and billions of money.
Mistake or not. . . (Score:2)
Nokia could still have been around as a player (Score:3)
Had Elop never been the CEO. Maybe Maemo would have had a chance.
Fact is, Nokia had decided to use Qt as the library to write applications for. And it ran on both Symbian and Maemo. So application developers had a migration path. Plus Maemo was a pretty decent OS when it came out. It still is ok.
Instead we got Windows Phone where they broke compatibility with prior apps not once, but thrice.
Thanks a lot Microsoft.
Oh. So sorry. (Score:2)
I meant by ADULTS looking to use the platform for something OTHER THAN GAMES.
Take a poll Nadella (Score:2)
I didnt hear anything Nadella you got to take a poll first before you can reach me.
They should have kept the Nokia X series (Score:2)
Killing off Windows Mobile/Phone made sense to me, but why they killed the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] devices I didn't understand. Those were just getting going, and would have given Microsoft a platform for their apps and services, while retaining compatibility with Android.
So the Windows Phone was like the Zune... (Score:2)
Bring Back My Microsoft Phone (Score:2)
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What does this sentence mean?
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I think he means it had an Apple like App Store, unlike Windows CE phones, which were just like desktop Windows.
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And just as unstable as Windows
We are, however, talking about Windows Phone here which is an entirely different thing. And it was pretty good too.
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WP was extremely stable. Not CE, but the rewrite, which was nothing like it.
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"And it was pretty good too"
Apart from its habit of chewing through both data caps and batteries in a remarkably short length of time.
Two friends were issued these things ... monthly data caps were exceeded in week two, despite not actually using any data themselves.
Many phones at the time would last days to a week ... these items did not survive an entire day on one charge.
There were fundamental issues with how M$ was dealing with updates - both software and messages - on their model. Issues that both
Re: the app store lockin has bad vs old old win mo (Score:2)
I never had issues with battery life. And living in a land of no data caps on most subscriptions, I actually hated the fact that early versions refused to download e.g. some updates over mobile data.
I mostly liked the user interface, too, and the virtual keyboard was the best I've used. But for me, there was one huge issue: lack of apps. Even things like Whatsapp came really late to the platform and lacked features. I think it is because the SDK was completely different from other phones, and the optios to
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Eh, on Windows Phone, you could turn on side loading. And it was stable as a rock.
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To be fair he was brought in to clean up Ballmer's mess on several fronts, mobile included. Lest we forget 2012 was also the release of everyone 2nd favorite Windows version, 8 (right behind ATF Vista) so he had his work cut out for him on a few fronts.
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Nadella was nit responsible. He was brought in after they axed those responsible.
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In 1997 Apple (whom I dislike for other reasons) did a great thing - they sent the iPhone specs to the FCC and asked for there to be an expedited review, because one year later it would be obsolete. The FCC obliged them and since then new phones do not need to have the same extensive review that the pocket PCs had prior to certification...
By this time the market was saturated with BlackBerry phones for the corporate and government people, sometimes with an exclusivity contract, and iPhones were making inroads. It took another decade -- till 2007 -- for Android devices to show up, and 2008 for Android V1.0.
I claim no great expertise in this area but the first iPhone came out in 2007, not 1997, and a decade later would be 2017 and Android actually came out in 2008 just one year later, so I don't think you just mistyped "2007". Given all that, I mistrust your overall story.
Re: Tripopoly is better than Duopoly (Score:2)
"NokiaOS" - would that be Symbian then?
Re: Tripopoly is better than Duopoly (Score:2)
Maemo, which is continued in Sailfish by ex- Nokia employees.
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Failfish.
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In America iOS is defacto monopoly and it sucks.
Ever heard of Android?