How Satya Nadella revived Microsoft
afr.com
afr.com
It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh.
He announced huge layoffs (18,000 people) almost as soon as he took over. A lot of Nokia people, but also 5,500 people not related to mobile and 1,400 of them at HQ. A year later he made another huge cut of 7,800 people.
Eh... According to Wikipedia, MS had 114k employees total as of mid-2016. Given that, I'd say a 18k layoff definitely counts as a big deal.
"It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh." is a colloquialism. d--b was basically saying "it's not like Nadella did a major overhaul.
With which jonknee disagrees, citing a layoff of 18,000. To which simonh claims is not a major overhaul since Microsoft is nebulously enormous. To which piaste disagrees, as 18k was actually 15.7% of the company.
You can all continue to debate whether or not 15.7% is a major overhaul, whether the actual people they fired were significant, etc...
But you quoting a colloquialism and asking us all to take it literally is not helpful to the discussion, or the culture of HN.
I don't disagree, but the parent was being just as pedantic as I was. Perhaps my snark was an attempt to end the petty discussion (apparently, improperly so). Read these two statements in the context of the discussion:
> burning it down and starting from scratch.
> started afresh
15.7% is a major overhaul, but IMO in no way insinuates "burning something down" or "starting afresh". Do you think either of those statements is consistent with a 15% cut in workforce?
PS - 12,500 of those 18,000 came from Nokia[0].
> with 12,500 of those coming out of the streamlining of Microsoft’s acquired Nokia assets.
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/microsoft-to-cut-workforce...
The article is all about how the guy changed everything so quickly while in fact this was already happening.
What's possible though is that the big guys at Microsoft planned to give the job to Nadella a while ago, and that Nadella, under Ballmer, did actually take all the decisions that took Microsoft in the right direction.
Satya came from cloud and enterprise (c+e). His big bet was on the fact that everyone will have a computer in a pocket augmented by the cloud. Capitalizing on that was very important.
Windows growth had been stagnant and ballmer lost the mobile opportunity.
Satya encouraged open source at Microsoft and putting customers need first.
I was part of this transition and the change was definitely felt. He deeply understands where the puck will be rather than where it is.
Well, just look at that stock prices graph, seems in line with this: sure there's a flat line during Ballmer's first 10 years, but then it suddenly started going up and the trend just continued in the same trend when Nadella got assigned. Not saying he's not doing a good job: from what I see I'd say he's doing well, though of course there's a whole lot of information I don't see so I really cannot tell.
The piece does that all-too-common simplification of providing a single cause to explain the fluctuation is MSFT's fortunes, a form of cognitive bias I believe. We like simple stories for complex phenomena.
It's hard to only credit one manager over another when the opposition is a big factor in the equation (along with the strength of the team).
Tim Cook is not helping accelerate Microsoft's cloud and SaaS businesses.
Higher MacBook Pro sales, highest ever iPhone sales. Services doing well...
I'd say their biggest problem is MBP pricing is high and a stagnate desktop line.
MBP pricing is typical for a redesign, not even high if you include inflation. They'll likely go down with time as they have in the past.
And desktops... Well hopefully there's something this year...
Apple said the touchbar is their first foray into a new system of inputs, perhaps a larger touchbar and some sort of haptic feedback is a new interface their going down, I think that could actually be pretty cool and innovative.
As for putting a touch screen on everything and desktops, eh... I mean, that Surface Studio looks amazing and likely appeals to creative professionals, but probably doesn't effect many people besides that. Kudos to them for the innovation, but I don't think it represents a better ecosystem.
For some specialty application I can see the usefulness of digitizer pen input like some Thinkpad X series models (e.g. X220T). But fat-finger touch? What for?
I can see a giant tablet with a desktop stand and keyboard becoming the new PC as a more plausible scenario than the iMac/OS X getting a touch UI.
I hope they don't come up with any other funny ideas.
All the wonderful presentation done by Jobs then is nowhere to be seen these days. I used to stay awake to watch it live from 2AM but I only read the reports later these days.
Cook keeps cutting everything but the most profitable departments just to make the numbers look good when Apple was about this unified experience on various aspects of what makes up as a digital life.
Your assumption is like praising a movie doing really well because the prior installment did excellent and people expect the same until they realize it isn't what it was.
Apple is trying to get into at least one exciting field, self driving cars. Supposedly AR/VR too. Maybe others. They've also released some pretty solid wireless earbuds last year. Sure, it's not the next iPhone, but honestly no one else has yet either in the past five years.
I've been increasingly unhappy (as a user and developer) with Apple's Mac systems for some time. I'm by far from the only one. They have lost several potential sales from me, and my team at work, simply because they aren't offering systems which we wish to purchase. Until they do, we will end up purchasing systems which provide the features we need, and move to platforms which are maintained competently. These are lost sales both in the present and the future. We'll see how things play out over the next few years, but I would not be at all surprised if there isn't a dramatic reversal of their fortunes at some point.
I switched recently because whether it be sony, hcp, or lenovo every laptop me and my girlfriend went through broke down in someway and we had to deal with the horrible process of going through those companies support system. Apple laptops may get defects or break down, but at least they the best product support, and in general their quality is superior to others in terms of failure rates[1].
[1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/laptops/LaptopReliability
At work, we target MacOS as a supported platform and have systems for continuous integration and deployment on this platform. There is no Mac system suitable for this task. Previously Xserve would have been used. Mac Pro is unsuitable and too expensive for the role. Right now we have a few mac minis on shelves in a machine room. They are crap. They are not suited for remote management, they have slow discs and bad performance all around, and the recent models are much worse than older ones. MacOS doesn't allow virtualisation on non-mac hardware so we can't use our beefy VMware infrastructure for the task. Bottom line: supporting MacOS for development and deployment in a serious capacity is not possible without suitable hardware or virtualisation. If Apple allowed MacOS X licensing on VMware ESX on non-Mac hardware, brought out a new Xserve, or even a more capable Mini or proper desktop Pro, we'd buy several tomorrow, because right now it's painful to maintain, and we just about cope with the poor minis which are creaking along while loaded to the max.
Decent graphics support is a problem. My group works on scientific and medical image storage, processing and visualisation, and the state of Mac graphics is sad indeed. Both on the hardware side and the software side. No OpenGL updates for years, and anaemic hardware. I get better graphics support on FreeBSD today... If I need a decent GPU with a decent amount of memory and current OpenGL support, I can buy one for a small fraction of the cost of any Mac, and use it with FreeBSD, Linux or Windows. The Mac is a barren wasteland.
And the software side is also a problem. It's been in continual decline since 10.6. Much of the base system hasn't seen maintenance in a decade at this point. Inter-operability and compatibility with other platforms is becoming increasingly problematic, since it's fallen a decade behind for much of the core tools. If you want a UNIX desktop, it's no longer ticking that box. You can get by with homebrew, but the hassle and poor usability makes it easier to just use Linux or FreeBSD. Right now, I use FreeBSD to debug clang++ C++ code because it's easier to do debugging there than on MacOS...
I'm still using a 2011 Macbook Pro with a matt display, Radeon GPU and lots of ports. It's been due for replacement for some time, but when my boss offered me a new one I said I'd be better sticking with the cheap Dell desktop I dual boot with Windows and Linux. Because other than the superficial aesthetics of the laptop, the desktop is better on all counts, and vastly more productive and more ergonomic--with a good quality monitor and keyboard.
Over a decade ago, at the university I worked at, you saw people dropping serious money on fully loaded Apple G5, then Intel towers for serious computation, and people had them under their desks and also in central compute facilities. Because that was the best you could get at the time, and people pushed them to the limit doing bioinformatics and simulation work. Today, they have nothing in this space. I also saw entire departments shift from 100% Windows to 100% Mac as their benefits and cost were realised. Today, people are moving back, because today's Mac hardware and software no longer has any meaningful advantage; it still has some advantages, but the cost/benefit has declined. If you need decent hardware specs, you can get better from Dell for a faction of the cost, and that's pretty sad to say.
They have increased sales by targeting causal users who want to spend a bit more on a laptop, but they have at the same time seemingly abandoned the high end, and the needs of technical, scientific and professional users entirely. I'd like to be able to purchase a decent mini for home use, and a new laptop for work, and hardware for the datacentre at work. But they aren't producing anything suitable in any of these categories, and haven't for a good while, and if they don't have anything I want to spend money on, I won't be giving them any business. Macs used to be machines I desired greatly but couldn't afford; today they are machines I could afford but don't desire. They've messed up badly.
For the software our group writes, we previously supported Linux, MacOS X and Windows as client and server platforms. We dropped MacOS X as a server platform a while back. For more recent work, we've found MacOS relegated as a client platform as well. Those CI support costs and compatibility problems due to the lack of real MacOS X maintenance resulted in it being deprioritised; Linux and Windows are the two main ones we support now, with MacOS being supported as a lower tier platform. That's a problem entirely of their own making.
We'll see what happens, but I can't help but feel that their current growth from phones and MacBooks is going to plateau and decline; their growth is certainly not from technical users who have been ignored for some time, it's from selling mediocre hardware at high prices as fashion accessories. I'd like to see them turn that around, but I can't see it being tenable to continue to purchase Mac hardware and support MacOS X in the medium to long term with the current trends.
And Tim Cook is far from destroying Apple.
To understand that you have to understand that pack behavior tends to mimic the leader, so if the leader does X, then their reports do X, and the people who report to the reports do X. In large organizations you may find pockets where someone in the change decided not to do X and then everyone below them is free of that expectation (for better or worse).
>> mimic the leader, so if the leader does X, then their reports do X...
There are plenty of people who are managers and not leaders, though.
The lack of having a solid phone that interacts with their other devices, and has a rich app/developer ecosystem cost them my business recently:
I am in my 60s, and comfortably semi-retired. After decades of being a Linux-as-much-as-possible enthusiast, I now want my interaction with my devices to be as easy and workable as possible. The time I still spend writing and software development should be as efficient as possible, in the deep work sense I want to spend just a few hours a day producing things hopefully useful to society, as effectively as possible.
Recently I spent a month evaluation of staying with Apple or getting a Surface Pro. I stuck with getting a new MacBook and with my iPad Pro because of the availability of the iPhone (I am still on Android, but will switch soon), with nothing comproble from Microsoft.
Whatever it takes, I think Microsoft should get back in the phone business with a winning product.
The Windows Phone might run faster, have a longer battery life, and just work better than the comparable Android flagship, but since you can get freaking Pokémon GO on the Android, people will buy the latter.
Microsoft is basically waiting for a chance at a paradigm shift in what it means to have a smartphone, so that they can release something you can get nowhere else. In the meantime, they're kinda just treading water and keeping their mobile OS workable and modern.
Which is the reason when my S3 dies, I might just adopt one of my Lumias as main device.
I am not willing to pay more than 300€ for a smartphone and it is pretty clear Google has no motivation to fix the mess of Android upgrades.
It runs the latest version of Windows 10 Mobile. When Microsoft releases a cumulative update next Tuesday for all Windows PCs, my phone will get the update likely within about an hour or so.
Verizon takes a "do so at your own risk" approach to Windows 10, because Microsoft doesn't permit carriers to hold back updates for Windows 10, and Verizon wants carrier approval for all software. So they don't have any Windows 10 phones, and the Lumia 735 is officially only supported as a Windows Phone 8.1 device. But the 929 and 735 both run great once upgraded to 10.
It's been a big sticking point for me that Microsoft's current strategy is to target enterprise, like with the HP Elite x3, but they don't have Verizon, the primary business carrier, on board.
I think that's likely both a good summary and a smart strategy. We can imagine, at least in broad terms, an evolution toward a much more unified set of connected devices. Microsoft has arguably already done the best job of reconverging the tablet and laptop with the Surface Pro but it's not enough to make most people really care.
Of course, the best way to predict the future is to invent it (Alan Kay) so, at some level, it's an opportunity that's up to them to create.
I had a lumia 950 and with the crashes, lack of apps and UX horror I bought a OnePlus after 2 months amd never regreted it.
I heard that Windows Phone 7 was nice and everything went downhill with WP8 but I wouldnt know personally
Fewer apps, turns out to be a pro, I've found. I'm realizing how much less distracted I am without every app and its dog installed. Also I'm realizing how well most things work via the web anyway (such as youtube), without requiring me to be logged in and sending rich tracking data to Google all the time.
Is this true? It sounds true but I wonder if it actually is.
(I for one don't care about apps -- at all. I want a "smartphone" because I want the ability to browse the web, and that's it. I can't be the only guy like this.)
And even if it were actually true that apps are important, if you're MS, can't you jump start the app ecosystem? Android being opensource, how hard would it be for MS to make a phone capable of running Android apps (and yet be a different phone with a different OS of course)? (Also, they have Xamarin).
> Microsoft is basically waiting...
Well, yes, they don't seem to be trying very hard. This is quite strange.
Microsoft already HAS developed the ability for Windows Phones to run Android apps. (They actually sent me a free phone just to test the feature!) Sadly, they decided not to release it, and we don't really know why. It could have been that they were worried about developers settling for Android apps instead of making UWP apps. Or Google could've threatened them, which seems plausible too. (Android is kinda "open" source, where yes, it's open source, but Google will do underhanded things if you dare to use it in any way they consider a risk to their dominance.) I can tell you the Android Bridge for Windows Phone worked amazingly, and my demo unit phone still has that version of Windows on it.
Threatened them with what? They don't seem afraid to go after Google (cf. Bing), nor should they.
It's a shame the feature you're describing hasn't been released, really! Any hope it might? When was this?
Microsoft and Google each have subtle and not-subtle ways of attacking each other. Google doesn't really feel threatened by Bing, everyone thinks Bing is a joke (even if it is pretty decent), plus Google steals all their best ideas from Bing. But things like the popups Google has on their sites to tell Edge users Chrome is better, Microsoft's retaliatory popups in Windows that tell Chrome users to try Edge, etc. Google has aggressively broken compatibility of their various services with Windows Mobile devices before. They definitely have options if they want to harass the others' customers.
Mind you I am a huge fan of Steve Jobs, despite the fact that I think he also was kind of an asshole. People are complicated I don't think Steve succeeded because he was an asshole but due to the other qualities he had not related to being an asshole.
And people of course change. Bill Gates seems like a much nicer man today than he was when he ran Microsoft. I guess much the same happened with Steve Jobs. He was a better person in his older years than in his younger.
Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole, he succeeded despite being an asshole.
You sometimes see people trying to emulate Jobs and thinking they need to be an asshole. His take was that they completely missed the reasons for Jobs' success.
He was definitely an asshole though, especially early on.
>"Bill doesn’t really want to review your spec, he just wants to make sure you’ve got it under control. His standard M.O. is to ask harder and harder questions until you admit that you don’t know, and then he can yell at you for being unprepared."
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
> He had my spec in his hand!
> I noticed that there were comments in the margins of my spec. He had read the first page!
> He had read the first page of my spec and written little notes in the margin!
> Considering that we only got him the spec about 24 hours earlier, he must have read it the night before.
> He was asking questions. I couldn’t stop noticing that he was flipping through the spec and THERE WERE NOTES IN ALL THE MARGINS. ON EVERY PAGE OF THE SPEC. HE HAD READ THE WHOLE GODDAMNED THING AND WRITTEN NOTES IN THE MARGINS.
> He Read The Whole Thing! [OMG SQUEEE!]
I've talked to people who met Bill in person and by all accounts be was smart, driven, pretty nerdy, and reasonable.
Seriously though, it's harder to find bigger philanthropists then the Gates.
Arseholery seems to fall into exactly that category. It's not helpful per se, but associated with many traits that obviously contribute to success, including clarity of vision and confidence in one's opinion against others' advice, and the ability to persist against all odds.
Nadella seems to be of another fabric entirely; he's not afraid of having a plurality of voices sing at the same time, he's more a conductor than a general.
What he's pulled off so far is amazing; lets hope it lasts.
May be he had something to do with these initiatives and lead to him being promoted eventually.
When I was approached to come work for MSFT I said "no" right away. The person recruiting me said "just listen to our pitch and then you can say 'no' if you want". After hearing Satya talk about where he wants the company to go and what it'll take to get there I had a 180 degree switch on how I felt about MSFT. I talked with some other old-timers who were there to see if things really had changed and they all told me that it was a slow progression but things were certainly changing for the better.
Now it's totally possible that they all are just good at selling to people but it was enough to get me to join and 95% of the time I'm glad I did.
I joined a short while ago and deeply regret it, since all we do is sales. Even OSS is treated as a pure sales play.
I have seen the same thing you are talking about and it is certainly one of the shitty parts of the job. Luckily I've done enough with the sales group around me that they are starting to understand that you don't sell Azure like you would O365 or whatever. There are still days where I walk away thinking that I must be on a different planet but the time I get to spend working with customers and building cool shit makes up for all of the bs.
Key point. I'm very happy with Microsoft, and have been since they first announced the surface line and the various other moves they've made to make a single OS.
But They've crossed the threshold of the "holy crap? MSFT did that?" And they are in the "well, this needs to work a whole lot better for me to stick around."
The fact that the CEO is aware of this already is a good sign. Looking forward to the surface event this year.
Windows 7 was great.
Windows 10 is not. Having a good cross platform code editor surely isn't going to make me use Windows 10.
It was really cheap [1], and it ran on top of DOS, so you didn't lose anything you already had. The big advantage was access to a GUI and new graphical applications. If you didn't like it, you didn't have to run it, but it was always more useful than the old-style character-based DOS front-ends.
The alternatives to Windows 3.x involved paying up to 20x more for a different operating system, installing it, and possibly losing what you already had, OR dumping your whole expensive system and buying another expensive system, buying expensive new apps, and relearning everything.
Worse, you'd be buying another expensive system while losing access to Lotus 1-2-3 (on which your commercial life probably depended).
The real alternatives weren't the 68000-based Amiga/Atari/Mac etc, they were DesQview and DR GEM.
Not sure why DesQview failed. However, Apple did Microsoft a huge favor by suing Digital Research and effectively killing GEM (except on the Atari ST).
[1] From my faulty memory, it was something like $40 when business applications cost $200 to $600. OS/2 cost around $500 and Sun was charging $950 for Unix.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&...
See: http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&...
.
So I read articles like this and look at the rebranding and really have a hard time deciding whether I want to point to these things as at least having a good direction, and showing that they understand that they need to care about these things. But then I'm dismayed at the execution. Does anyone else have the same thing going on?
1. They've completely dropped the Phone market under him. As in gave up.
2. They are not in the personal assistant game at all. Alexa & Google have that market all to themselves.
3. The educational market is steadily switching to Chromebooks. The new generation of kids will likely not even know how to use MS Office.
4. On the back end, they've made .NET work on Mac and Linux. This is great for me, since I don't have to worry about Windows Server licenses, but doesn't this eat into their large cash cow?
5. SQL Server - the other cash cow, is great, but free alternatives will start affecting the bottom line.
6. Windows 10 rollout stalled very much short of their stated goal of being on 1 billion devices.
2. This is being worked on, there is cortana for cars, pc's and phones, so it would make sense for it to expand to even more devices in the future.
3. This is the point of windows 10 cloud, which recently leaked.
4. Windows is really not the cash cow of Microsoft, getting more people into the ecosystem is better for buisiness.
5. Free alternatives have existed forever, alternatives that you could argue are the same or better, recently SQL Server was ported to linux which actually should shore up its market share, and even possibly increase it.
6. True but does this actually matter that much?
2. Maybe it is being worked on and maybe it'll even be great. The problem is that people don't replace personal assistants every 2 years. They lost the first mover advantage.
4. Windows for enterprises, specifically server versions are cash cows. I fail to see the value (to Microsoft) of a developer getting into the .NET ecosystem if they intend to run your code on Linux.
5. It's true that free alternatives have always been around. But now, they are reasonably good. And more importantly, good enough.
6. Yes, it does. It's actually one of the few places where they could monetize people getting into their ecosystem.
2. Yet. Microsoft has a tremendous research department. They could still come out with something game-changing.
3. This is also good. We don't need a bunch of kids who are brought up on software designed in the 1980s and hasn't advanced since.
4. I think MS has decided that they need to open up to certain degree despite the loss of revenue that it can cost because of the other less tangible benefits.
5. It's a good thing that MariaDB has been forked from MySQL because Oracle has had a tendency to kill every open source project they've acquired, or let them die.
6. The problem with Windows 8 was that aside from the improvements under the hood, every single thing that changed was for Microsoft's benefit, and not for the benefit of the users. Windows 10 backed off on this arrogance, but only a little. Microsoft has clearly made the commitment that when it comes to PC operating systems, that the user, and not the software is now the product, and that from now on, in order to get the marginal improvements in their products, you will have to sacrifice a lot in terms of privacy, usability and convenience. And that's assuming that their QA is up to snuff, which it clearly isn't.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
However I don't like them, personally I think they could have been a better proposal if Google had decided to leverage Dart, and offer a Smalltalk environment on them. Even if that required some kind of developer mode.
As it is, my trusty Eee PC 1215B is what I use for travelling.
My sense is that education is the only market where Chromebooks have been pushed at all aggressively. Like many things Google does, it's not clear that they have a really fleshed out strategy for the Chromebook.
They're also not really targeted for doing local development though people do use them in various somewhat unnatural ways.
Although they can't do everything I can do on my MacBook, they're often suitable for my needs when traveling and I appreciate the small size of the Asus Flip.
The OEM trend is to design for Windows 10 and then offer a version of the same hardware as a Chromebook. This is a tough sale as people expect Chromebooks to be cheaper but they are not.
[They are not cheaper for two reasons. (1) OEMs pay very little for Windows 10 and they get a lot of that back by bundling crapware. (2) The Chromebook adds costs in hardware qualification and drivers etc, plus stockkeeping, distribution and advertising costs. The advertising cost is significant because Microsoft provides 'advertising support' for ads that promote Windows, but not Chromebooks.]
EDIT
Chromebooks were cheaper, back in the days when Windows laptops had 4GB of RAM and hard drives. Today, cheap Windows laptops have 2GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB eMMC cards, so the Chromebook's price advantage has gone or even been reversed.
In any case, schools can easily set up Windows machines so that kids can ONLY run a browser and nothing else. See Windows 10 Education AppLocker.
Coming later this year, with SnapDragon ARM chips inside, and the ability to run x86 desktop programs if necessary.
There will be tablets and 2-in-1s. The key point is that the SnapDragon SoC -- unlike Atom SoCs -- is built for smartphones with SIM cards inside.
I doubt he had much choice. WP can't exist just for the sake of it. Yes they were increasing market share, but at what cost? If you're losing money on each phone sold and if the amount you're losing is linear with each sale because you're effectively buying the sales, selling more is a road to catastrophe. Gaining WP market share would only be worthwhile if there is a path to profitability. I don't know this was the situation for a fact, but it seems likely.
>...treating the product line like commodities without acknowledging the importance of the ecosystem.
Right, so the argument is WP was worth subsidizing because it supports the rest of the ecosystem. But suppose supporting the rest of the ecosystem was better served by integrating it with competitor's products? Hence Office for iOS, etc. At which point WP just becomes a boat anchor round their necks. I don't think there was any possible future in which it was worth the costs.
In your analysis dropping the product was irrational. I don't think it was, but must admit I'm only speculating as to the reasons. I'd love to know the reality.
My own perception is that their haphazard treatment of their product line has tarnished the sentiment in these communities. It's one thing to phase out phones, but to suddenly drop them in the same year as an amazing keynote in which they promoted the Band and Phones as being central to the platform, at the same time that you're pushing OS updates...it's not pleasant when you've bought into that vision.
Phones might not have been worth the cost in an accounting sense, but if they've lost platform advocates then it could affect their good progress.
Like you though, I'm just speculating and would love to know the politics behind it.
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.
Windows Phone 8/8.1 was amazing. W10M has lost the lustre that 8 had.
https://data.afr.com/2017/01jan/microsoft-ceo-hype/index.htm...
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
or how about Google?
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Success and failure can and should be measured relative to other related companies in the same industry.
Last 3 years
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
M$ clearly have made their point with continuous eternal Beta program and sheeple insider ring, UWP and WDDM2.0, Gimmicky stuff cough DX12 gamemode cough.
Destroyed the PC, Mr Nadella should be praised for all this...
I haven't touched a ms product in over a decade. And by god I won't until the end of my miserable days in this world.