Satya Nadella: 'We clearly missed the mobile phone' | Hacker News Reader

Satya Nadella: 'We clearly missed the mobile phone'

mashable.com

10 pointsclumsysmurf6 comments

I would argue that they did not miss mobile phones so much as poorly execute on it. They knew mobile phones were an opportunity from the outset and made multiple attempts at gaining traction. But all the attempts missed. How many versions of Windows did they try out for the phone?

I have a Lumina phone running Windows 10 and it is a great phone. But it is way too late. Just because they know they need to be in AR/VR does mean they will be able to execute on it and win.

I remember a friend having a windows phone years before iPhone was introduced.

It had a resistive touchscreen, and the UI was basically Windows in smaller screen.

So, no they didn't miss, they just didn't have what it takes to make it happen. They had to wait for someone to show them how it is done.

Hence I don't have high expectations on seeing something extraordinary coming out of MS in the VR space. They just don't have the imagination.

I would love a phone that I could plug into a dock and use just like a regular computer. I was certain that's what Microsoft was going after with their Windows 8 release. I'm not sure why they aren't pursuing it. I think I read somewhere that Intel dropped their mobile chip line.

Canonical was working on that with Ubuntu Touch, and I remember that someone had tried making a GNOME (or was it KDE?) fork that had support for that. It's definitely something the free software community is looking into, but my main concern is that whatever we end up with being based on free software. Otherwise it would be a step back as a community.

That's what Microsoft is pursuing on their latest phones under the name "Continuum". It doesn't run x86 apps (unless you connect to something like Citrix) but it provides a desktop environment very similar to regular Windows 10.

Not only did they miss the mobile phone opportunity, they aimed away from it. Windows phones are objectively bad.

Further: "company won't make the same mistake with augmented reality and virtual reality." What, they're not going to port Word, Excel and PowerPoint (ugh!) to AR and/or VR?

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