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Microsoft CMO Confirms Development of 'Spiritual Equivalent' of Surface Phone (hothardware.com)

Posted by timothy on from the open-wide-and-say-ohhhhm dept.

MojoKid writes: We all know what Microsoft wants to do with Windows 10. It's supposedly the last monolithic release of Windows and the ultimate plan is to unite hardware from different device categories under a single, universal ecosystem. That includes smartphones, which is an area where Microsoft has historically struggled hard to compete. The release of a premium "Surface Phone" of some sort, however, could prove to be a game changer. Microsoft is aggressively pushing Windows 10 upgrades, and makes no bones about it, all in an effort to get developers on board to build universal Windows 10 cross-platform apps and spur mobile development. In that respect, Microsoft needs to finally make an impact in the handset space and Windows 10 Mobile is the company's one shot to do just that. And it appears that Microsoft is working on what could be essentially a true Surface Phone, or at least something very similar. In a recent interview, Mary Jo Foley pushed Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela on the prospect of a Surface Phone and he confirmed the company is working on a "breakthrough" phone that is the "spiritual equivalent" of their very successful line of Surface branded products. Capossela has been with Microsoft for over two decades. He used to write speeches for Bill Gates and is intimately familiar with Microsoft's many products and strategies.

9 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Oh noes by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I'm sure it'll be another stunning success, just like the last 5 failed phones they tried to force into the market.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:Oh noes by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They don't. Their phone division has always been a massive financial liability. Its just that Microsoft is literally obsessed with the thought of getting into phones.
      Any other company acting like their phone division but without their massive safety net would have gone bust 5 times over by now.

    2. Re:Oh noes by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Insightful

      wouldn't a company that knew its ass from a hole in the wall have figured out mobile was important say 15 years ago? WTF?

    3. Re:Oh noes by mlts · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It wasn't that long ago when Windows Mobile was the dominant OS in the smartphone arena. To boot, MS and hardware makers did a pretty good job. The HTC Wizard comes to mind, with a week's battery life. It might be laughable by our standards now, since it only puttered at EDGE speeds, and didn't have the latest rev of BlueTooth, not to mention the use of MiniSD cards... but for the time, it was a very nice phone.

      Microsoft dropped the ball when the iPhone came out. The biggest problem is that Windows Mobile was designed around a stylus, while iOS and Android were designed for finger gestures. The shift in the UI expectations left MS in the dust, just because all their device apps were not "finger friendly". MS was encumbered with an existing solution, and having to either figure out how to retrofit the latest UI style, or to just toss everything out and start anew.

      MS did a good job with starting anew, and they have a competitive device.

      As for a spiritual successor for the Surface... this gets me wondering... are they going to try for an Intel x86 type of computer running W10 in a smartphone form factor? If they could pull this off running a real x86 version of Windows 10 and all Windows applications, it would be a game-changer.

      Of course, other companies tried this, such as Motorola with the Atrix and Atrix 2... but if a phone could be tossed in a stand or have a USB-C cable connected, and it take the role of a desktop machine with an x86 version of W10, Microsoft would be breaking new ground. It would mean that one wouldn't need to have anything other than a keyboard, monitor, and USB-C hub in order to have a functioning desktop.

      There is one missing piece of the puzzle, and that is getting a phone to handle heavy GPU tasks. This is easy. Since MS has their own graphics standard, it would be trivial for them to make something like a LAN version of OnLive, and have smartphones and tablets send the DirectX commands over the network to a render box, and the render box send back streaming video. Since 4k res of streaming video is about 10Mbps, a wireless LAN can easily handle this. If one uses a newer graphics protocol like ZPEG which gets even better compression for the same quality, it would be even less.

      If Microsoft pulls this off, where the only GPU needed for a device would be for the basic UI... they would have a major breakthrough market that would be in high demand.

    4. Re: Oh noes by Dracos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      MS will continue to fail at mobile, but not because of their strategy. They've been failing at mobile since before the iPhone.

      Their mobile failures are just examples of a broader cultural deficiency in Redmond: they don't know how to connect with consumers, and they're too stubborn and full of hubris to realize that. The XBox division succeeded mostly because it was left alone by the top brass (who likely didn't understand a damn thing about it). When MS learns to put aside their preconceptions about buying habits and that consumers don't shop the same way CTO's do, they might have a chance in any consumer market, including mobile.

  2. Re:ok...Apple/Jobs is a religion..i get that by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    "You have found A Spiritual Equivalent of a Surface Phone."

    # wield phone

    "You are now wielding A Spiritual Equivalent of a Surface Phone."

    # turn on phone

    "Nothing happens. The battery appears to be dead."

    # drop phone

    "You can't. The Spiritual Equivalent of a Surface Phone appears to be cursed."

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  3. Re:What's the difference from a Lumia? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lumia represents the last of the Nokia/Elop era, whereas a "Surface Phone" is done in-house?

    x86 compatibility, perhaps. If they cram an Atom into a phone then when docked you've got a desktop PC in your pocket, with the full win32 back catalogue.

  4. game changer by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't remember anyone saying, "The iPhone is a gamechanger" when it was released. People said, "this is really cool" or for some, "this is really lame." They focused on the features of the phone, and how it felt. They didn't need to tell people it was a gamechanger, because that was fairly obvious right at the start.

    Hypothesis: if you have to tell people your product is a "game changer," then it probably isn't.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. Re:ok...Apple/Jobs is a religion..i get that by dissy · · Score: 5, Funny

    The LCD is pitch black. Your data cap is likely to be eaten by a grue.