Microsoft’s move away from making smartphones actually makes a lot of sense
MICROSOFT last Wednesday announced that it was further ‘streamlining’ its mobile phone business.
The firm will lay off more than 1,800 workers and will focus its phone efforts where they have differentiation, according to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. So while this certainly doesn’t mean that Microsoft will ignore smartphones in the future, it certainly sounds like they’re not interested in selling Lumia phones – or any others – to the average consumer anymore.
It may sound a little bonkers to get out of the smartphone market now, when everyone and their mother are glued to their mobile devices. And this latest move does mean that Microsoft has written down more than the US$ 9.6 billion ( RM37 billion) it spent to acquire Nokia’s handset business in 2014. But it’s actually not a bad idea, and it gives Microsoft the chance to focus its efforts on the next wave of the smartphone revolution.
Because the smartphone game – at least this round of it – is more or less decided. Microsoft wasn’t just trying to sell phones, it was trying to sell its own platform. And when it comes to smartphone platforms, Apple and Google have won, with an estimated 96 per cent of the world’s market share between them, according to Gartner’s February report on the smartphone market. Microsoft, in that report, came in third, with 2.8 per cent of the market.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. It’s easy to laugh at Microsoft now, but it’s worth remembering that there was a time when smart analysts thought the mobile operating system Windows Phone could actually overtake Apple’s iOS by the end of 2015.
Windows Phone had some interesting features, it promised integration with the world’s dominant computer operating system, and those candy- coloured Lumia phones usually were pretty well-made.
But by the time Nadella took the wheel at Microsoft – and former Nokia head Stephen Elop said ‘so long’ soon thereafter – it seemed like Microsoft’s whole smartphone business wasn’t long for this world. Instead of playing catch- up on hardware, Nadella has focused the company’s efforts more squarely on software and the cloud, where its mobile efforts have actually seen a rebirth.
Rather than trying to get more developers to write programs for its own anemic app store, Microsoft’s focused on getting its own apps in more places. Since Nadella took over, the Office suite has gotten pretty good mobile apps, even for non- Microsoft products including — gasp! — the iPhone. — WP-Bloomberg