Windows Phone progress but tempered with bad tidings.
I wrote earlier today about news from Microsoft involving cutting jobs and changing focus and how I thought it was good news. Many others have basically seen this as the death knell for the WP platform. In light of those posts I think I need temper my stance a bit. I don't want it to seem as though everything is rainbows and unicorns.
Yes, I think that this change in strategy is a good one, as I previously mentioned. Cutting jobs and reducing the number of new devices will mean that the line will either be more profitable, or at the least less damaging. At the same time, it would be wise to view Microsoft as starting to focus less on that form factor in a potential slow move away from that market entirely from a hardware perspective.
My favorite part of this whole thing has to be though, that this basically kicks in the face the people who bothered suggesting that Microsoft was trying to use Windows 10 to save Windows Phone. If these moves amount to a gradual move towards killing off Windows Phone, the fact that they started before Windows 10 even officially hit the market in form shows that Windows 10 was in NO WAY a plan to save Windows Phone. If they were hoping it would, they would have withheld cuts until after at least first quarter in which Windows 10 was publicly available on phones.
In fact, them doing this, but not actually committing to killing Windows Phone yet puts even more clout behind my theory that they are hoping on the opposite. They want to reduce their investment in the platform, but they don't want to kill it, not because they think Windows 10 will save it but because they don't want the developers to leave yet. Windows 10 needs the breadth of apps that are on Windows Phone today. If they kill that product line off before Windows 10 is even generally available, that will drive many of those developers away for good.
I also think it would be a mistake to kill Windows Phone at all. As I said before, the problem then becomes a repeat of Windows RT. At least with phones in the mix, small tablets have some company and a half decent app store to help prop up their viability. If phones disappear from that category however, you'll soon see OEMs jumping ship on tablets that run the phone and small tablet version of the OS much in the same way that most OEMs stopped producing WinRT tablets long before MS officially killed it.
I believe it is possible that Microsoft could exit the phone hardware market in the next 1-3 years. Basically return to the way things were a few years ago, only with Nokia out of the picture. Not having that champion OEM would hurt things. But it isn't unthinkable. And if they did that, I could see the phone and small tablet SKU being discontinued in 3-5 years.
I also think it is more likely that after the currently rumored handsets release we'll start to see new Microsoft phones that are more inline with the Surface style of devices than the Lumia style. I think what is behind the layoffs is a set of incompatible strategies. Microsoft traditionally did hardware differently than Nokia did. I just don't think that the two companies meshed well and the Lumia hardware wasn't posting the numbers needed to make the rest of the company overlook that.
But, we should know by around this time next year what this all means. If we continue to see a stream of Lumia devices just in reduced numbers that largely ape what has been released over the past few years then we'll know that nothing has really changed, and the plan is probably to exit that market.
If, instead, we see something different that shows a true investment by the team at Microsoft and which departs from the older Lumia designs, we'll know that they truly did plan on taking a stab at this.
Yes, I think that this change in strategy is a good one, as I previously mentioned. Cutting jobs and reducing the number of new devices will mean that the line will either be more profitable, or at the least less damaging. At the same time, it would be wise to view Microsoft as starting to focus less on that form factor in a potential slow move away from that market entirely from a hardware perspective.
My favorite part of this whole thing has to be though, that this basically kicks in the face the people who bothered suggesting that Microsoft was trying to use Windows 10 to save Windows Phone. If these moves amount to a gradual move towards killing off Windows Phone, the fact that they started before Windows 10 even officially hit the market in form shows that Windows 10 was in NO WAY a plan to save Windows Phone. If they were hoping it would, they would have withheld cuts until after at least first quarter in which Windows 10 was publicly available on phones.
In fact, them doing this, but not actually committing to killing Windows Phone yet puts even more clout behind my theory that they are hoping on the opposite. They want to reduce their investment in the platform, but they don't want to kill it, not because they think Windows 10 will save it but because they don't want the developers to leave yet. Windows 10 needs the breadth of apps that are on Windows Phone today. If they kill that product line off before Windows 10 is even generally available, that will drive many of those developers away for good.
I also think it would be a mistake to kill Windows Phone at all. As I said before, the problem then becomes a repeat of Windows RT. At least with phones in the mix, small tablets have some company and a half decent app store to help prop up their viability. If phones disappear from that category however, you'll soon see OEMs jumping ship on tablets that run the phone and small tablet version of the OS much in the same way that most OEMs stopped producing WinRT tablets long before MS officially killed it.
I believe it is possible that Microsoft could exit the phone hardware market in the next 1-3 years. Basically return to the way things were a few years ago, only with Nokia out of the picture. Not having that champion OEM would hurt things. But it isn't unthinkable. And if they did that, I could see the phone and small tablet SKU being discontinued in 3-5 years.
I also think it is more likely that after the currently rumored handsets release we'll start to see new Microsoft phones that are more inline with the Surface style of devices than the Lumia style. I think what is behind the layoffs is a set of incompatible strategies. Microsoft traditionally did hardware differently than Nokia did. I just don't think that the two companies meshed well and the Lumia hardware wasn't posting the numbers needed to make the rest of the company overlook that.
But, we should know by around this time next year what this all means. If we continue to see a stream of Lumia devices just in reduced numbers that largely ape what has been released over the past few years then we'll know that nothing has really changed, and the plan is probably to exit that market.
If, instead, we see something different that shows a true investment by the team at Microsoft and which departs from the older Lumia designs, we'll know that they truly did plan on taking a stab at this.
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