6 ms·
Ehh. All the credit being given to Nadella are initiatives that Ballmer not only started, but has to push against the will of the board to pursue. I had major
by anjc 10y ago
Ehh. All the credit being given to Nadella are initiatives that Ballmer not only started, but has to push against the will of the board to pursue.
I had major hope for Microsoft in the last few years, and I'm starting to see Nadella's MS slowly unravelling all of the good progress. I just can not believe that Windows Phone adoption got as high as 15% in Europe and then under Nadella they immediately dropped it like it was dirt. The hardware and software was superior in every way to every alternative, and this deprecation has made many of their other successful manoeuvres pointless.
It's mindboggling to me that they're crediting Nadella with Surface and Hololens, in particular.
- ghaff 10y agoLeaders generally get an outsized share of blame and an outsized share of credit for results that become apparent on their watch. I agree that Microsoft didn't suddenly turn 180 degrees the day Nadella took charge. As for the phone though? Microsoft lost that one a long time ago. They can/should continue to milk other client cash cows and continue with other businesses like Xbox that are peripheral but they're well-established in. But phone would require an all-in push and it's hard to see how that would make sense for Microsoft as a distant #3. Focusing on Azure doesn't preclude them doing something like that of course; Microsoft's a big company. But I can't fault them from deciding that they largely missed mobile and moving on. (I'm unconvinced Surface and Hololens will amount to anything significant either but I don't really see those as a focus.)
- anjc 10y agoOh Phones are gone. Finito. But they weren't a few years ago. They were taking a sharp incline with the 9xx range of Lumias in Europe, and they only declined when Microsoft whipped all Lumias from stores and released nothing for a year, the 950 range, which they stopped supporting before they'd even stopped selling it. W10M is effectively still in beta and there are no phones to use it now. But in the meantime they'd been pushing Continuum, W10/Phone integration, UWP, Xbox/Phone integration and so on. So removing phones tarnished a large chunk of their product line imo. Same for the Band. There's no competitor to it, still, and it's also gone. Same for Kinect. Same for Onedrive subscriptions, etc etc. This is what worries me about Nadella's MS and it's the same thing that worries me about Cook's Apple...treating the product line like commodities without acknowledging the importance of the ecosystem. Having said that, as you say, they're a big company. My perspective is solely from that of a devices user.
- pjmlp 10y ago> Oh Phones are gone. Finito. They are doing ok with hybrid tablets though. Here in Germany it started to be more common to see hybrid tablets with W10 than Android on the retail stores. So I still have some (tiny) hope of them succeeding with phablets with SIM card on them. In any case, I am more willing to just adopt one of my Lumias when my S3 dies, than sponsoring OEMs that never update their devices.
- anjc 10y agoI still want a 950XL even though I know I'll regret it :/ Poor MS. I really feel that their lack of commitment to their platform can't be construed as 'focus', and might come back to haunt them.
- pjmlp 10y agoBy following Microsoft blogs, articles, BUILD presentations among other sources, I get the idea that this whole mess, going back to WP 7, was once again the result of their political wars between DevTools and Windows division.
- anjc 10y agoOh that's interesting. I suppose any internal conflict ultimately comes down to issues of leadership and vision, regardless of the company size.
- pjmlp 10y agoI might be completely wrong, and everything I wrote in this comment is not correct, but this is how I saw it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069181#13071212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069181#13071212
- ghaff 10y agoPeople I know with Surface Pros really like them. I'd consider one myself except that - They're too pricey for a casual "I'll give it a try" - I don't otherwise use Microsoft anything any longer - For travel, I'm pretty much sold on Chromebooks which are easier to type on with no table and just my lap. But arguably Microsoft has done a better job of bringing together laptops and tablets for creation of typical business content than anyone.
- vetinari 10y ago> The hardware and software was superior in every way to every alternative, No, the hardware was Qualcomm reference platform, which you could find in some Androids too. On Android it just wasn't subsidized the same way as it was on WP side.
- anjc 10y agoMaybe not all hardware, but the camera and lenses in the Lumia range trounced any competitors upon their release, and the screens too as I recall. Windows Phone 8/8.1 was amazing. W10M has lost the lustre that 8 had.
- RandomOpinion 10y agoWhy blame Nadella? Terry Myerson headed up the Windows Phone division during its long slide into oblivion before being promoted to head up the entire Windows division when Nadella became CEO. He's specifically responsible for dropping the ball, if anyone is.