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Microsoft Is No Longer Selling Any Lumia Windows Phones On Its US Store (neowin.net) 85

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-the-road dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: It seems that Lumia has reached the end of the line, as the Microsoft Store is no longer selling any of the company's Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile handsets in the U.S. The first signs that the end was approaching for Lumia came back in February, when Microsoft launched the Lumia 650, which was said to be the last in the company's Lumia line. In August, Microsoft removed all mention of Windows handsets from its U.S. store homepage, relegating 'Windows phone' to a dropdown menu instead. This week, just one Lumia handset remained on sale: the ATT-locked Lumia 950, available only in white. Now, that model has sold out too, leaving none of the company's Lumia handsets available to buy on its store. The Windows phones page on the Microsoft Store lists thirteen products, but eight of these are out of stock. When more stock is expected on a temporarily sold-out product, Microsoft typically replaces the 'Add to cart' button with one that says 'Email me when available'. Instead, each of these products now has a grayed-out button, stating "Out of stock."
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Microsoft Is No Longer Selling Any Lumia Windows Phones On Its US Store More

Microsoft Is No Longer Selling Any Lumia Windows Phones On Its US Store

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  • Offering (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:24PM (#53581283)

    The fact that they're no longer offering them for sale probably doesn't significantly change the number they are selling.

    • Re:Offering (Score:5, Funny)

      by ranton ( 36917 ) on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:30PM (#53581311)

      Yeah this was probably planned two years ago but it took that long for them to sell their last four units.

      • Wish I had mod points, that really made me laugh thanks :-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c ( 8461 )

        this was probably planned two years ago but it took that long for them to sell their last four units.

        I'm surprised, actually. I'd have thought Ballmer would go through phones a lot faster than that...

        • You were perhaps thinking about chairs.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by c ( 8461 )

            Oh... I had just kinda assumed Ballmer would've changed up to something more modern, being in charge of a tech company and all that. Plus he's getting older and those chairs aren't getting any lighter.

  • The problem was that they never sold any Lumia phone through their store (or any others). This just makes it official.

  • I was talking about this with my brother (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:44PM (#53581379)
    and the consensus between us was that Microsoft couldn't make Windows phones cool to teenagers. It's funny, but it seems like the teenage demographic decides what phones are going to succeed, even if they're not the ones making the final buying decision (or even the biggest buying demographic). Me? I'm gonna make a Samsung J7 or LG Stylus Note my next phone since they're cheap, have decent radios and 2 GB of ram. But I'm a nerd, so I'm choosing on specs.
    • IMO, they targeted the wrong market. They should have gone after the Blackberry's market, they would have had more success. The Lumia is a pretty good business phone: would integrate seamlessly w/ Exchange server, and you get office pre-installed on the phone. And if a company bases its email system on either an exchange server or on outlook.com, then a Windows phone is just perfect. This assuming that employees are not using the phone for Pokemon Go. Only thing it lacks are apps like Lyft or Uber Part

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by johanw ( 1001493 )

        Too late. In some large companies the MS-indoctrinated IT guys would force windows phones on the employees, but when BYOD comes in those windows phones disappear quickly.

        • Re: I was talking about this with my brother (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They were forced on us all about two years ago (MS partner company, 100k employees). But we're just about due for another refresh now and they've thrown in the towel. Android this time. Windows phone is certainly dead in my company.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )

        would integrate seamlessly w/ Exchange server, and you get office pre-installed on the phone

        The Nokia N900 had that with it's mail client and "docs to go", as did probably a few other non-MS phones. It sold a few but not the numbers that MS seem to be looking for so I don't think it's that much of a "killer feature".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I was talking about this with my brother and the consensus between us was that Microsoft couldn't make Windows phones cool to teenagers. It's funny, but it seems like the teenage demographic decides what phones are going to succeed, even if they're not the ones making the final buying decision (or even the biggest buying demographic).

      The main thing Windows Phone was is late, iPhone launched in 2007 and Android in 2008 so by the time the stylus-oriented Windows Mobile was replaced by the touch-oriented Windows Phone in 2010 they were fighting a rather established user base with more polished apps. And there were so many Android manufacturers trying to find niches that they saturated the non-iPhone market, leading to intense competition where they often did not make any money at all. Microsoft didn't want to chase the bargain bin market,

      • In addition, even when Windows Phone came out they were lagging far behind for another couple years. They also abandoned two consecutive generations of their phones, the late model Windows Mobile phones, then the Windows Phone 7 devices. Most people expect to get at least one major update to their phones before it's abandoned.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      The reason M$ does so bad in the youth market, kids will be kids and they always hate the perve kid that spies and tattles on them, they loathe that kid and M$ spying on all the customers all of the time has put people right off, especially the youth markets and incidentally the power user market (those that made M$ are exactly the ones who M$ is now pissing off). They are pretty much fucked in the consumer market, just hanging on by legacy products they have perverted into undesirability Windows and Office

    • It's not that they couldn't make them cool to teenagers, they couldn't make them cool to developers. I have one, and I don't feel like I got ripped off because it came with a year of Office 365 for less than the price I'd otherwise have paid. When they killed off their project for attempting to get Android apps working it pretty much marked the beginning of the end.

      Seriously, browser support was a joke particularly in the early days of Edge. There are a few other browsers on there, but there's nothing that
  • If not for Windows Phone, I don't think I'd use a smart phone. I won't use Apple for all of the obvious reasons, and Android is a mess of an OS. I use my Windows Phone for work (I don't play games on my phone), and it's super slick. I was going to get a Lumia when my current Windows phone died, but barring that, I'll get whatever the best hardware is that's running Windows Phone. They really do have the best product, and I hope they continue to ride out the waves of fad and fashion that drive phone sale

    • Eventually, their turn will come around in terms of fashion, and eventually, people who use their phones for work will discover Windows Phone.

      That's cute, but in the real world, no. I know it's fun to slag off on others' choices as unserious, but those of us with Androids and iPhones are using them to get real work done. We're not sitting around playing Pokemon Go all the time. I mean, we can because it's available and sometimes we do, but we also use them extensively for mail, Slack, project planning, calendaring, SSH, and all the other work-related stuff you're doing on your beloved phone. I promise you that you're not the only person using the

    • I fully second this. My first smartphone was a Lumia 520, when Windows Phone 8 was first out. Previously, I never touched texting, but Windows Phone 8 made it a breeze. That, and some other things - OneNote in particular - made it a work in the park. The GPS was good, particularly in conjunction w/ HERE maps. Only downside was limited customization in terms of colors and backgrounds - something completely fixed in Windows 10.

      I currently have a Lumia 550, which I use as a travel phone. (I'd have used

  • All that money, how many billion spent, and they couldn't shell out a few extra 10 million dollar bills to have the apps written? And it's not the first time they failed to properly buy their way into a market. Just makes no sense to me...

    • Actually, they did get quite a few apps written, but they still missed some major segments. Like until recently, when WhatsApp added video calling, there were no popular VOIP or video calling apps for this platform. Similarly, in the US, there is no support for Uber Partner or Lyft, so if one is a driver for those, this phone will not be helpful. It's a pity that Microsoft didn't do a better job in identifying what would be needed and ensuring its support.

      One thing I'd note - I travelled to India last

    • Most of it isn't really their choice. IIRC they offered a lot of support for app developers, but not enough people bit.

  • I've had nothing but issues with my Lumia 950. Windows Mobile has some really good design/usability ideas but jesus it is buggy.

    I regularly need to reboot the phone to fix GPS issues. A patch came out a few months ago that made Bluetooth not randomly get completely corrupted with my car, but the implementation is still buggy. Using apps while playing music causes stuttering in the music. I've had the phone for over a year now and it still feels like a beta device.

    The worst part of it is that the previous ve

  • Death to Metro/modern (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Friday December 30, 2016 @05:54PM (#53581689) Journal

    Great.

    Now MS can remove their cell phones out of the start menu and desktop and bring back aero, menus, skuemirphism, and a consistent UI so we can upgrade past 7.

    We all know Windows 8 and 10 bombed because MS crippled them to turn the PC into a cell phone so old people afraid of change would want a Windows phone.

    Well sorry for those that said MS had to focus on mobile. It clearly failed.

    Modern is out and win32 is back in hopefully very soon

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Billy boy, sorry, but you're wrong about one thing, at least. The Metro interface is *awesome* on the phone. I don't like it on the desktop, though.
      • That is right. When I had my Windows 8 phone, I liked the Metro interface on it. On a laptop, I hated it so much that I got PC-BSD and installed it over it. But Windows 10 Mobile improves on it in terms of customization, and the calculater, which includes unit coverters as well, is better too

        • I gave up on Windows Phone when my 820 died. I didn't want to spend +$500 on a phone with a dead platform?! Not to mention Windows 10 is buggy and horrible on mobile and even desktop compared to 8.1.

          I hate Android but love the ecosystem. Got a bloated Android phone. You know what Android reminds me of?

          Android == DOS/Windows. Windows Phone == OS/2. Blackberry/Symbian == Unix. IOS === Mac classic. It's like the 1980s and 1990s again. No one likes Windows! But loved the apps and everyone had one so it became s

          • My Icon's battery died, so I traded it in for a Moto X, since I was missing some important apps on the platform. But once Windows 10 Mobile was out, I bought the 150 as a travel phone, and it served me beautifully. I understand the dead platform part and do regret the lack of apps like Uber Partner or Lyft, but WhatApp finally gave it video calling, which removes one reason not to use it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      One of the problems i've noticed even back on win7 is a lot of websites are deciding in error (like msft did with win8) that everyone has a touch screen and have thus removed the scroll bar to get an extra few pixels of screen space.

      How do I get that back without killing script for the whole page?

      I can work around it by clicking in the area and then using the arrow keys but I shouldn't have to.

      • that everyone has a touch screen and have thus removed the scroll bar

        Or a mouse with a scroll wheel. Though I'm sure if you had a trackball instead you would have loudly said so by now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          Yeah scroll wheels while awesome aren't common on laptops.

          • But edge swipe scrolling and multi-finger scrolling both are.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by sims 2 ( 994794 )

              Those are features i've had to disable so the mouse doesn't resize the icons on my desktop and jump me around the page when I accidentally brush it. I'm sure it works well on some but not on mine.

              Imho the webpage shouldn't even be able to control that aspect of the browser

              • Imho the webpage shouldn't even be able to control that aspect of the browser

                You have no disagreement from me on that part. Other than the fact that sometimes in CSS content box overflow should not be obviously scrollable - part of this used to be to enable compatibility with non-standard spacing in IE. Hiding scrollbars on a main content area is not the intended use of that.

    • Why win32? When all current Intel CPUs are x64, Windows 10 is 64-bit and most systems now come w/ >4GB of RAM. Also, Microsoft doesn't seem to be ending the OS - they're replacing the Lumia line w/ Surface Phones, an inferior concept due to emulating an x86 on a CPU w/ average processing power. I'll hold on to my Lumia 150, and keep using it for whenever I travel

      • Because winforms in .Net and their MFC counterparts provide a superior desktop experience over mobile phone apps on a desktop.

        The whole reason for app stores and universal apps is to make the desktop ecosystem available for Windows Phone so people will buy them. ... But here is the problem? There are now more apps on Android today than desktop applications on Windows :-( They lost.

        What MS needs to do is focus on media creation by improving visual studio Android tools and cross platform .Net tools for iOS an

        • I have all the platforms in question. For Facebook or /., I use this laptop running TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD). Due to all the coverage about Windows 10 Telemetry and other security controversies, I no longer use that for things like banking, shopping, or anything where my data security is important to me. Only thing I use that for is when there is something that I have to have Windows for. So I've kept automatic updates open, and right now, mainly use that for games. Once I have either a SteamOS jail ru

  • Here in Finland, even hardcore Lumia users dislike (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Friday December 30, 2016 @05:56PM (#53581705) Journal

    Even hardcore Lumia users have grown to dislike their Lumia phones, by now. Almost always it's because the lack of features compared to Android.

  • FWIW, I have both a 950xl and a EliteX3. I replaced my Galaxy and Ios devices with the Windows Mobile devices because they work so much more intuitively for me.

    However, it wasn't too long ago, when I was using my Galaxy S2, that I never tired of bashing Windows Phone 6 and the prior iteration - Windows CE. They were terrible in my opinion. With the advent of windows 8, the game changed. The UI finally surpassed both Android and Iphones and I found the devices worked great. Windows 10 is even better.

    However,

    • I have an iPhone, and the reason I got it in the first place - FaceTime. My son and my sister's family have iPhones, and I wanted to video chat w/ them. Android Duo and WhatsApp's video chats only came recently: FaceTime was the only game in town for a while.

      Now, w/ WhatsApp video calling, Windows 10 Mobile users too can have video chats

    • Maybe they like getting OS updates which is pretty hit and miss with Android. How many devices are still waiting for Marshmallow never mind Nougat?

      • The comment was focused more on usability. I find Iphone and Ios the antithesis of logical and user friendliness.

  • Since licencing undisclosed tech in android is where all of Microsoft phone division's profits have ever come from.

  • And there was much rejoicing. You don't have to consider yourself middle-fingered this time around, Microsoft - you are middle-fingered.

  • Certainly worthwhile to kill Nokia for.

  • Taking the Lumia off the market is a very intentional maneuver on Microsoft's part. They are hoping that by the time they launch the Surface Phone in Q4 next year with full support for X86 Win32 apps on ARM [pcworld.com] that we will have largely forgetten about how much the previous Windows Phone underwhelmed us. Also making a short but clean break gives them an excuse not to upgrade all the phones on the market right now to the new OS that supports X86 Win32 apps.

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