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Microsoft's biggest failure was Windows Mobile. If they got Mobile right hands down they would be on a highway to $10T company but otherwise they are riding the

Microsoft's biggest failure was Windows Mobile. If they got Mobile right hands down they would be on a highway to $10T company but otherwise they are riding the wave of cloud, AI and gaming. Like Steve Jobs[0] said they are strong opportunists, they have no taste, they don't have original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product but they keep on coming. Microsoft uses its big cash pile to either acquire companies or to copy them. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSg3fU9XWow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSg3fU9XWow

pjmlp 5y ago
Apple was quite happy to get some of that cash in the late 90's.
bombcar 5y ago
I feel if Windows Mobile had just kept at it for ten years straight they would finally have had something - continually changing strategy killer any hope they had of being in a solid third place.
- miffy900 5y ago
  To be fair, they were at it for about 6 years before giving up (2009 to 2015); which is a really really long time to spend trying to get momentum going.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I suspect the real problem was it was hurting other parts of the business. They needed to abandon it to free themselves to accept the reality of the dominance of the iPhone.
    - toopok4k3 5y ago
      Dominance of iPhone? Do we live in the same planet? Android won the masses.
      - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        >Android won the masses. Nobody cares what poor people buy.
        datavirtue 5y ago
        What planet are you on...that's ALL corporations care about.
        tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        There is a reason everybody targets the iPhone before Android. That is iPhone users spend more than Android users. https://www.dignited.com/48795/why-do-ios-apps-generate-more-revenue-than-android-apps/ https://www.dignited.com/48795/why-do-ios-apps-generate-more...
- sylens 5y ago
  That compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was brutal to their momentum. I had multiple friends with Windows Phone 7 devices, and only one with an 8.
  - chihuahua 5y ago
    I may be confused about this, but I think there was also a compatibility break from WP6.5 to WP7, and from WP8 to WP10. It seems that eventually, mobile app developers had enough of this farce and abandoned Windows Phone. It's funny that you can still run 1980s visicalc.exe on Windows 10, and CMD.exe supports 1980s DOS command syntax, but for mobile apps they decided that apps should be rewritten from scratch every year.
    - whizzter 5y ago
      Yes, there was a break from early Windows Mobile (pre WinPhone7) because that UI system was really more or less a classic Windows GUI squeezed into a small screen and it sucked (unless you had a pen, but it was still a tad cumbersome). I bought a cheap WP7 Nokia to develop on and the thing i remember most was that the UI was as smooth as Apple and not a stuttery one like Android of the same age. Don't remember exactly why they left WP7 owners in the dust, but the biggest issue with it was that they fell for the Osbourne Effect and left quite a few mobile merchants pissed off about the amounts of WP7 devices left in stock that nobody wanted (and since those mobile merchants were often not the same as those with MS brand trust from the computer industry they felt no reason to give them a second chance). While customers might've been a tad cautious, the biggest reason IMHO why WP8 died because few carriers,etc wanted to stock or sell them to begin with.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        The number one rule of software and hardware should be never give your customers a reason to re-evaluate their original decision - and a breaking upgrade does just that. I had a friend who loved his windows phone 7 - but ended upgrading to an iPhone because of that.
    - 5y ago
- epolanski 5y ago
  I loved my Lumia 920. By far the fastest and cleanest mobile OS I had used. App support was lackluster though. It always felt like companies and developers had absolutely no intention to reimplement their applications on Windows Phone, even when it had a bigger market share than iPhone, especially in mid/low-income countries. So I was stuck in 2015 with no authenticators, no mobile banking, no public transport apps. Even some of the biggest apps out there like Facebook where not releasing all of their products, e.g. there was no Snapchat and many other big names. Windows Phone ultimately was killed by lack of third party applications and Microsoft imho should've kept burning money for 3/4 years more into the ecosystem bringing more applications on their mobile platform.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    Same here. That Lumia 920 Windows phone was a breath of fresh air compared to the mess of laggy icons and screens you have on Android and iPhone. Shockingly for Microsoft, the OS didn't get in your way. Snappy and very functional like a phone should be. I have Google's flagship pixels on Google Fi. Bloated slow shit.
gigel82 5y ago
We have Android apps running on Windows now, and devices like the Duo which are not quite phone-like but pretty close and we know they've been experimenting with running Windows 10 X on those, so it wouldn't be far fetched to go back down into mobile space with a Windows 10 device running Android apps in an emulator (alongside the limited native app catalog).
Gareth321 5y ago
I maintain, the Windows 8.1/10 mobile OS was superior to iOS and Android. At least in terms of UX. Microsoft should have tripled down on app support and brute forced their way into the market, as they're doing now with Game Pass.
- dlp211 5y ago
  MSFT tried to brute force their way into the mobile market. App developers wouldn't take their money.

pjmlp 5y ago

Apple was quite happy to get some of that cash in the late 90's.

bombcar 5y ago

I feel if Windows Mobile had just kept at it for ten years straight they would finally have had something - continually changing strategy killer any hope they had of being in a solid third place.

miffy900 5y ago
To be fair, they were at it for about 6 years before giving up (2009 to 2015); which is a really really long time to spend trying to get momentum going.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I suspect the real problem was it was hurting other parts of the business. They needed to abandon it to free themselves to accept the reality of the dominance of the iPhone.
  - toopok4k3 5y ago
    Dominance of iPhone? Do we live in the same planet? Android won the masses.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      >Android won the masses. Nobody cares what poor people buy.
      - datavirtue 5y ago
        What planet are you on...that's ALL corporations care about.
        tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        There is a reason everybody targets the iPhone before Android. That is iPhone users spend more than Android users. https://www.dignited.com/48795/why-do-ios-apps-generate-more-revenue-than-android-apps/ https://www.dignited.com/48795/why-do-ios-apps-generate-more...
sylens 5y ago
That compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was brutal to their momentum. I had multiple friends with Windows Phone 7 devices, and only one with an 8.
- chihuahua 5y ago
  I may be confused about this, but I think there was also a compatibility break from WP6.5 to WP7, and from WP8 to WP10. It seems that eventually, mobile app developers had enough of this farce and abandoned Windows Phone. It's funny that you can still run 1980s visicalc.exe on Windows 10, and CMD.exe supports 1980s DOS command syntax, but for mobile apps they decided that apps should be rewritten from scratch every year.
  - whizzter 5y ago
    Yes, there was a break from early Windows Mobile (pre WinPhone7) because that UI system was really more or less a classic Windows GUI squeezed into a small screen and it sucked (unless you had a pen, but it was still a tad cumbersome). I bought a cheap WP7 Nokia to develop on and the thing i remember most was that the UI was as smooth as Apple and not a stuttery one like Android of the same age. Don't remember exactly why they left WP7 owners in the dust, but the biggest issue with it was that they fell for the Osbourne Effect and left quite a few mobile merchants pissed off about the amounts of WP7 devices left in stock that nobody wanted (and since those mobile merchants were often not the same as those with MS brand trust from the computer industry they felt no reason to give them a second chance). While customers might've been a tad cautious, the biggest reason IMHO why WP8 died because few carriers,etc wanted to stock or sell them to begin with.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      The number one rule of software and hardware should be never give your customers a reason to re-evaluate their original decision - and a breaking upgrade does just that. I had a friend who loved his windows phone 7 - but ended upgrading to an iPhone because of that.
  - 5y ago
epolanski 5y ago
I loved my Lumia 920. By far the fastest and cleanest mobile OS I had used. App support was lackluster though. It always felt like companies and developers had absolutely no intention to reimplement their applications on Windows Phone, even when it had a bigger market share than iPhone, especially in mid/low-income countries. So I was stuck in 2015 with no authenticators, no mobile banking, no public transport apps. Even some of the biggest apps out there like Facebook where not releasing all of their products, e.g. there was no Snapchat and many other big names. Windows Phone ultimately was killed by lack of third party applications and Microsoft imho should've kept burning money for 3/4 years more into the ecosystem bringing more applications on their mobile platform.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Same here. That Lumia 920 Windows phone was a breath of fresh air compared to the mess of laggy icons and screens you have on Android and iPhone. Shockingly for Microsoft, the OS didn't get in your way. Snappy and very functional like a phone should be. I have Google's flagship pixels on Google Fi. Bloated slow shit.

gigel82 5y ago

We have Android apps running on Windows now, and devices like the Duo which are not quite phone-like but pretty close and we know they've been experimenting with running Windows 10 X on those, so it wouldn't be far fetched to go back down into mobile space with a Windows 10 device running Android apps in an emulator (alongside the limited native app catalog).

Gareth321 5y ago

I maintain, the Windows 8.1/10 mobile OS was superior to iOS and Android. At least in terms of UX. Microsoft should have tripled down on app support and brute forced their way into the market, as they're doing now with Game Pass.

dlp211 5y ago
MSFT tried to brute force their way into the mobile market. App developers wouldn't take their money.