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Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business (theverge.com)
Microsoft is making more changes to its smartphone business. The company, which sold its feature phone business last week, on Wednesday announced that it is scaling back hardware -- laying off 1,850 staff and take a charge of $950 million including $200 million in severance payments in a memo to all employees. The company insists that "great new devices" are in the works. From Myerson's memo: Last week we announced the sale of our feature phone business. Today I want to share that we are taking the additional step of streamlining our smartphone hardware business, and we anticipate this will impact up to 1,850 jobs worldwide, up to 1,350 of which are in Finland. These changes are incredibly difficult because of the impact on good people who have contributed greatly to Microsoft. Speaking on behalf of Satya and the entire Senior Leadership Team, we are committed to help each individual impacted with our support, resources, and respect. For context, Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly active devices, our Surface and Xbox customer satisfaction is at record levels, and HoloLens enthusiasts are developing incredible new experiences. Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security, manageability, and Continuum, and with consumers who value the same. Thus, we need to be more focused in our phone hardware efforts.
I thought they fired all of Nokia last year.
Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security,..."
Think I found your problem right there.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Are they even growing at this point? I mean, their marketshare isn't much above statistical noise, and even buying Nokia didn't help them much thanks to their demand to re-form it into their vision instantly instead of trying to ship Nokia into shape and introduce their vision slowly into it.
I get their drive to unify mobile+gaming+PC+whatever into one big fat ecosystem, but let's face it - they got into the mobile market way too late, and what moves they did make were either not capitalized on properly (Sidekick), flopped hard (Pink/Kin), or was way too-little/too-late (Nokia).
Maybe it's time for them to instead go back to their roots? It may be too late to un-suck the Windows UI, but at least they can make moves to un-NSA the damned thing and to stop treating their customers like easily-abused chattel... ...nah. Maybe it's better to just let them die. Wish Linux had a wider market, though.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...free upgrades to Windows 10 on all your Windows devices!
...maybe they will stop trying to make the Windows Desktop work like a Windows phone...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
So what you're saying, is that it's the most effective virus ever written?
I've now had to reformat about a dozen different systems in the past two weeks because of botched "upgrades". In some cases, the systems didn't roll back properly (why am I being presented with the EULA only after it upgrades?). In other cases the systems were rendered unbootable due to driver issues. I've seen maybe three or four successful upgrades, and even those had to be rolled back because it nuked the ability to use the peripherals attached to the computer.
All this stuff kinda reminds me of the early 2000s where you could get a virus just by plugging an unfirewalled Windows XP system straight into the internet. Within minutes, you'd have something nasty on your computer and critical processes would be crashing left right and center.
Windows 10 seems an awful lot like that. Plug your computer into the internet, wait a while, and suddenly you're infected. Good luck restoring your computer to the former state 100% (without prior system images or other full backups).
To my friends and colleagues being affected, best of luck, folks. Hope you have a soft landing someplace.
(No, don't work for MSFT. I do work with a lot of the folks there.)
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
Mind you they still have 90 billion in cash reserves, they can apparently afford to fuck up endlessly.
this wall:
http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...
should have left many year ago.
The streamlining phase.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I don't think slashdotters understood the really big news here: for Microsoft IT WAS REALLY A BUSINESS, not a bad joke! :-D
It took awhile, but I finally caught the typo. It says their success was "limited to", but what they meant was "limited by". The sentence makes sense after you swap in the correct word.
Proverbs 21:19
Like the Titanic, or the Hindenberg?
That comes out to about $108k in severance/employee if done evenly (obviously not). Most of the good companies in my region pay only 2 weeks base pay + 1 week/year with the company...
90 bilion is nothing. You can buy about 9 small websites-without-actual-income with that amount of money.
How long before Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy sees a similar fate because it has angered so many Microsoft customers?
Even if the upgrades were all 100% successful and all of the hardware had proper drivers, it's still an asshole move on Microsoft's part, just to be able to say "Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly active devices" to the press.
Lay off the smartphone business and streamline the 1850. Cheaper and more efficient. You could even use those 1850 to turn your OS back into something people would want to use on a desktop. Desktop. Remember? Where you once stormed the market and ruled. Where you still rule to some degree but might not much longer if you keep bumbling like a drunk in the dark.
MS, I usually sell good advice, this one's free: Concentrate on what you're good at. Desktop OS. Gaming consoles. Office applications. Hardware. Even server OS and database systems to a degree.
But get it finally: Mobile phones isn't yours. You learned it the hard way with online connectivity, that people don't give a shit about your MSN internet-ripoff. When are you going to catch on that nobody is interested in your android-iPhone ripoff?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
20 million xbox ones sold (roughly). counting xbox one as a windows 10 unit is ridiculous, but we'll count them anyway since they do.
50 million pc sold globally last 12 months (very rough, very loosely based on actual figure of 68m sold in 2015)
the number of mobile devices is so insignificant, not even going to count them.
leaves 229,999,997 computers forcibly upgraded to windows 10 or tricked into it by malware-like misleading popups and alerts
and finally, those 3 people who voluntarily upgraded to windows 10 with no nagging.
now imagine a pretty and eye catching infographic with all those listed. you done? good. now i don't actually have to go draw one up.
Microsoft has a Smartphone business?
Never heard of it. Which does it run... iOS or Android?
What "Smartphone Business"???
;^)
Are they serious? Yes, unfortunately, they are!
I work for a smartphone company and we don't even have 1800 people in the entire company!
How many stay in Finland? 1350 sounds like a lot.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That should be evident since SJ started the ball rolling in Jan 2007.
Apple, too, must face the same issue.
The Vancouver office will have to send even more L1 visa holders to replace them.
The laid off people need to move to Vancouver :)
...maybe they will stop trying to make the Windows Desktop work like a Windows phone...
...I found a Windows user! We need an angry mob with torches, pitchforks, a barrel of tar and some feathers over here! PRONTO!!!
as in dead
Just go all the way and hang-up the phone business. It appears that Microsoft apps work better on Android phones than Windows phones and they are making lots of money on the Android OS, so just do the best thing.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Rebuild Nokia back to where it was before it was bought
Seemed like a good idea at the time now I'm stuck with it for ages. Oh well, live and learn.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
With it's marketshare under 1%, how much more "streamlined" can it get? Give it up, MS, WP is DEAD!
Yet nobody gets upset at Apple for forcing OS upgrades, or Google/Cell phone carriers for forcing OS upgrades on their phones. Everybody loves to whine but MS is just adopting the same model of OS upgrades as their competitors have had for years.
Excuse me, COWARDLY shill; but Apple NEVER forces an Upgrade. NEVER.
My iPad 2 is still running iOS 7. It COULD be running iOS 9.x; but I don't want to upgrade. So I don't.
My MacBook Pro is running OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks). It COULD be running OS X 10.11.4 (El Capitan); but I don't want to upgrade. So I don't.
Up until yesterday, my iPhone 6 plus was running iOS 8.4; I finally saw something in iOS 9 that I thought was interesting, so I upgraded to iOS 9.3.2. But nothing and nobody forced me to.
Get your facts straight, MS Shill.
Best AC Post EVAR!!!
To be fair-ish, the reason for this was to be able to say "windows 10 recently crossed 300 million" to *developers* - who've abandoned Microsoft's roadmap en masse. And they did that largely because Microsoft's roadmap was "throw out your existing WIN32 code and rewrite it for our great new mobile/desktop/xbox platform that nobody uses yet". About 4 years after those same dev's started rewriting their existing WIN32 code the for iOS/Android/web platforms that everybody uses. Now they've bought Xamarin, in an attempt to allow devs to target iOS and Android like they want - and get Windows support 'for free'. Except, again, they're counting on those devs to do yet another rewrite to get support for that platform that nobody uses. There are some real benefits to being able to target iOS and Android from a single code base (to whatever limited extent Xamarin actually enables that), but is that worth starting over?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
>> Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business
It still has one?
Microsoft HAS a smartphone business????
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
MS is on a burning platform.
Now they must jump in the water.
aaaaaaa
Still absolutely fascinated to see where they take their smartphone business. I don't think they see themselves as a company that can stay relevant in the consumer space without a competitive mobile platform, particularly when that's arguably the most important piece of any connected ecosystem. The fact that these are mostly former Nokia jobs lends credence to the idea of an in-house "Surface Phone" being their next move.
hi
Twenty years after its death. There were the early 2003 smartphones (one word) like the Tornado (HTC) candybar, the touchscreen 2005 "WM5 smart phones" (phone + PDA), then WM6, then WP6.5 (notice the P at 6.5; even some 6.0 where named Windows Phone), all based on some version of Windows CE (a stripped-down NT thing) then... nothing until 2010, when WP7 popped. No upgrades. Then 7.10 (A/K/A WP 7.5 and 7.8). Then WP8. No upgrades. WP7 hardware was soon abandoned (I still use an HTC HD7, which basically was a flashed over phone from the WP6.5 era). Then WP8.1, which smoothed out the faults in WP8. Most phones could be updated. Some could not (Nokia 800, for one). All along promises (yeah) were made. None kept. Then W10M. Some phones could be "upgraded".
OS/2? I knew it well but left in 1999. Party was over.
WM/WP/W10M? I knew it well but left in 2016. Party is over.
Even Windows itself is on the chopping block. I have yet to swing the blade.
All this stuff kinda reminds me of the early 2000s where you could get a virus just by plugging an unfirewalled Windows XP system straight into the internet. Within minutes, you'd have something nasty on your computer and critical processes would be crashing left right and center.
This is true, its was around 2002/2003. In order to not get XP infested after first boot while being hooked up to the internet you had to have a software firewall and windows updates already downloaded, then install them before you connect the XP box to the internet.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
When you're on a burning platform in a sea of competition, your only choice is to jump the shark.
"And as long as it has taken the company, Microsoft has still arguably achieved something that its competitors have not... It took more than two decades to get there, but Microsoft still somehow got there first."
Translation: We don't know what we did, bet we did it first.
On another note, such a shame. I still wish they would dump that secure boot crap and let the hobbyist/modding community go to town like they did on WP7. IMHO I think that would do more to attract developers than trying to wave their unified development platform around. Take down the walled garden and let the hobbyist and modders go to town customizing and hacking roms once again.
And they thought it was a good idea to not release the Metro userland for Windows 7! I think that's the original sin, Metro software could have run in floating windows back in 2012 on the OS people actually use. Breaking forward compatibility, and so early to boot was a dickish move.
In former times, .NET 1.1 and 2.0 were available for win 9x, even DX9 and other things. Windows 3.1 had win32s though it mostly served to run Freecell.
No Metro apps on Windows 7 means no user base, so nothing to draw the developers in. Users could have installed the stuff voluntarily : "I'm hearing of iPad and Android all the time, what if tried these appy apps things on my PC first?"
They tried and failed badly to create a smart phone business and therefore could not stop Android from growing into a powerful platform. With Android apps being able to run on the inexpensive laptop devices known as Chromebooks... Well let's just say the phrase, "Houston, we have a problem" is an understatement for Microsoft.
With less than 10% market share I was always wondering why they even got any press time with Windows Phone and now with under 1% one has to wonder how many millions do they want to be spending to keep the brand alive.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
down this business for good?
What smartphone business? From May 23, 2016: Windows Phone Market Share Sinks Below 1 Percent
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Where did Status Nadella come from. Now it's the time for a "our platform is on fire" memo and Microsoft being acquired at sale price by that former employer.
Netcraft has confirmed
My Macbook also runs an older version of OSX, and I definitely don't want to upgrade it. But on regular intervals there is a notification explaining that the system could be oh so much better if I just click on that upgrade button.
They might not force you to upgrade, but they sure like telling me that I should.
OSX has become consistently worse since somewhere around 10.5 and unless I hear about a single real improvement in Capitan, I'm not using it.
My Macbook also runs an older version of OSX, and I definitely don't want to upgrade it. But on regular intervals there is a notification explaining that the system could be oh so much better if I just click on that upgrade button.
They might not force you to upgrade, but they sure like telling me that I should.
OSX has become consistently worse since somewhere around 10.5 and unless I hear about a single real improvement in Capitan, I'm not using it.
You used the term "MacBook", so I assume you have an Intel Mac.
I'm not sure what you are calling "Consistently Worse"; but I would call that an oversimplification. To be sure, and like with ANY OS, there is a bit of Ebb and Flow, or Tick and Tock, concerning versions that introduce new/rethought features and core concepts, versus versions where those changes are polished and the OS re-stabilized. OS X has followed this pattern for quite awhile. Kind of like Star Trek Movies: The Even-Numbers are the Best...
El Capitan is OS X 10.11; so...
But, even allowing for "skipping the Odd versions", or similar upgrade patterns, OS X has just NOT been getting Worse; rather, it is maturing into something not JUST NeXTStep with a GUI Cocoa Shell. Things like Core Audio, Core Animation, launchd, GCD, Metal, Timer Coalescing, File Versioning, "Restore System State", App Handoff, etc, etc, ET CETERA, are undeniably ALL *IMPROVEMENTS* that simply didn't exist in 10.4 (except launchd).
Full disclosure: I ran 10.4 (Tiger) until I just couldn't run it anymore in a practical sense; so I feel ya. BUT...
But, for all that change, a LOT of things stay the same. Also, I think that if you compared the UI changes with ANY other OS, including Linux, you'd have to agree that, despite some minor UI changes over the years, that OS X has, at this point, the hands-down most consistent UI over time. In fact, the UI of El Capitan has more in common with MacOS (Classic) 1.4 than Windows has from 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10...
That's less of a problem than not having supported WIN32 code on Windows RT. They're able to seed Metro into the marketplace by giving away free Windows 10 upgrades - but they can't actually get people to rewrite WIN32 code for Metro when the whole world's moving to either web-based apps or iOS/Android. But if WIN32 code could've been easily ported to Metro, then they'd have stood a chance. They're now trying to make it easy to port Metro stuff to iOS/Android, but there's no Metro stuff to port. If they'd done the same with WIN32, they'd have had to deal with some of the weaknesses of WIN32, but they'd at least have had a huge developer base behind them.
Perhaps if they'd introduced Metro back when Windows 7 was introduced, they could've courted their developer base before iOS and Android got them. But that would've required some foresight - not Microsoft's strong suit...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
> And they thought it was a good idea to not release the Metro userland for Windows 7!
> I think that's the original sin, Metro software could have run in floating windows back in
> 2012 on the OS people actually use. Breaking forward compatibility, and so
> early to boot was a dickish move.
If they had released Windows 7 with the Metro/tiles abortion, people would've been compaining about Windows 7 and hanging on to Windows XP. Instead, people ended up compaining about the Metro/tiles abortion in Windows 8 and hanging on to Windows 7.
Dear idiot developers. I know that your "usability testing" confirms that a desktop oriented GUI *SUCKS* on a smartphone. But have you ever considered that maybe, just, maybe, a smartphone-oriented GUI also *SUCKS* on a desktop PC? I am *NOT* going to streatch my hand out 2 feet to tap on a URL, let alone compose this post on Slashdot. The idiots at Microsoft has made the same mistake as the idiots at Mozilla, and tried to ram a smartphone GUI down the throats of desktop users. The Atrocious^H^H^H^H^H Australis GUI did to Firefox on the desktop what Metro/tiles did to Windows on the desktop.
The same GUI does *NOT* work on both desktops and smartphones. You need different GUIs for those platforms... deal with it.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Fuck you. Apple routinely "forces" upgrades by refusing to back port fixes.
My sister in law couldn't get FaceTime to work after Apple fucked up renewing certificates and response was to upgrade iOS.
This was a problem due to not having enough space on phone and not having broadband download.
Fuck you in the eye. You ignore a lot of Apple fuckery.
Fuck you. Apple routinely "forces" upgrades by refusing to back port fixes.
My sister in law couldn't get FaceTime to work after Apple fucked up renewing certificates and response was to upgrade iOS.
This was a problem due to not having enough space on phone and not having broadband download.
Fuck you in the eye. You ignore a lot of Apple fuckery.
How many fixes has Android Back-Ported?
What's with all these "Microsoft has/had a phone business" comments? It's like you're making the lamest joke in the room and laughing like you made the biggest funny. Just makes you look lame and stupid, this is a nerd/tech site. You're either making a terrible joke, or you're the joke for being ill informed.
To be clear I wasn't suggesting them releasing Metro tiles with Windows 7 (2009), but rather backporting the stuff to Windows 7 when they released 8 (2012). That of course would have required that Windows 8 doesn't force Metro tiles on their users, e.g. allowing a start menu.