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Windows Phone Free-Fall May Force Microsoft To Push Harder On Windows 10 (pcworld.com)

tripleevenfall quotes a report from PCWorld: Microsoft sold a minuscule 2.3 million Lumia phones last quarter, down from 8.6 million a year ago. Phone revenue declines will only "steepen" during the current quarter, chief financial officer Amy Hood warned during a conference call. That's dragged down Microsoft's results as a company, too. As the company's mobile device strategy continues to disintegrate, Microsoft may feel compelled to push harder on Windows 10 adoption and paid services to prove it can survive without a viable smartphone. CEO Satya Nadella's strategy is simple enough: grow Microsoft's revenues by convincing customers to adopt its paid subscription services.

7 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Time for the Paid Shills to Earn Their Keep! by mrmaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am eagerly looking forward to reading about how amazing the Windows phone is and how everyone should own one. Every time there is a Windows phone article there end up being more positive comments about the windows phone than there are real life window phone users.

    1. Re:Time for the Paid Shills to Earn Their Keep! by Octorian · · Score: 5, Informative

      When Windows Phone was newer, Microsoft paid everyone to write apps for it. As such, people were giving it tons of half-hearted lipservice calling it the "legitimate 3rd platform" to the exclusion of anything else (that didn't have as big of a bank account behind it).

      Now that they've stopped the payouts, and still keep changing the APIs, support is dropping and a lot of that lipservice is starting to fade away.

  2. Re:How the hell can MS push Win10 HARDER? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Free download for Vista and XP users.

    So far they've only targeted Win 7 and 8 machines.

  3. Windows becomes SaaS? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...CEO Satya Nadella's strategy is simple enough: grow Microsoft's revenues by convincing customers to adopt its paid subscription services....

    Microsoft has already stated that they intend to make Windows 10 a service.

    .
    Now Microsoft is saying that they want to move away from the "buy once" revenue model.

    So how long before there is a monthly fee to use Windows?

    Perhaps the enormous data harvesting is only the first of many egregious aspects of Windows 10.

  4. Re:I'd consider paying for Microsoft Linux. by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Their file explorer GUI is absolutely incredible

    Indeed.
    Sometimes I just cannot believe it's decided to let me wait while it renders a huge number of thumbnail images instead of letting me actually do stuff. Context switches just browsing into another directory are also difficult to believe are a good idea. Incredible indeed. They managed to make it far worse than the earlier version.

  5. Re:Fixed that for you by gtall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Apple's core customer base is interested in fashion accessories and status symbols". Not really, I work in science and we're filthy with Macs and iPhone and iPads, this is not status conscious community. They use the devices because they need to get work done. I recall one fellow finally making the switch from Winders to Mac, his comment to me was, "I feel like I own my computer again". I'm not entirely sure what MS is doing to their clientele, but that sentiment seems rife among scientists.

  6. Re:But free falling is fun by mcswell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Strange, I have one sitting right in front of me, and it seems to still be alive. A few hours ago, I was sitting next to my son at dinner, and he was showing me his Android. I used to have an Android, but I much prefer the Windows OS. He said, "But you can't get App A on Windows!" I opened up the Windows phone store, and downloaded App A. "Oh, but you can't get App B!" I went back to the Windows store, got App B.

    Obviously there are far more apps for Android than there are for Windows. Some would say I was just lucky. I'd say I don't need the junky apps that mostly fill the Android store. In all the years I had an Android phone, I never found as good a weather app as the one that came built into my Windows phone. I prefer the navigation apps I have on Windows to the ones I had on my Android phone (although I hear that app maker has jumped ship). It's much easier to set the alarm on my Windows phone (the Android phone was always over-shooting). And in general I find my Windows phone easier to use.

    I am _not_ an Ms shill, and I never moved from Win7 to Win8 on my desktop (nor have I found any compelling reason yet to move to Win10). And for programming, Linux is far superior. But Android is, IMNSHO, a piece of junk.

    I realize that barring some miracle, the Windows phone will probably be dead some day. But it isn't yet.