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Neowin: Microsoft's Windows Phone Business 'Is Dead' (neowin.net)
An anonymous reader quotes Neowin:
If you've been expecting Microsoft to issue a press release formally announcing the end of its Windows phone business, you're probably hoping for a bit too much. But make no mistake: its phone hardware business is dead. RIP-dead. Send-flowers-dead. Worm-food-dead. Some fans, and even some in the media, have consistently refused to acknowledge this, despite the clear signs in recent quarters. Now, Microsoft's own figures, and its statements regarding its phone division, should make it irrefutably clear that there is no life left in its Windows phone business.
During the quarter ending in December, Microsoft's phone revenue dropped to just $200 million, which included some sales of feature phones, before the company completed its sale of that business unit to Foxconn in November. That figure has now dropped to virtually nothing... Today, as Microsoft published its earnings report for Q3 FY2017, it revealed that its "Phone revenue declined $730 million". Based on its earlier financial disclosures, that means the company's phone hardware revenue fell to just $5 million for the entire quarter ending March 31, 2017. During Microsoft's earnings call today, its chief financial officer, Amy Hood, acknowledged this, stating that there was "no material phone revenue this quarter". The outlook for the next few months is similarly bleak, as Hood predicted "negligible revenue from Phone" in the coming quarter.
During the quarter ending in December, Microsoft's phone revenue dropped to just $200 million, which included some sales of feature phones, before the company completed its sale of that business unit to Foxconn in November. That figure has now dropped to virtually nothing... Today, as Microsoft published its earnings report for Q3 FY2017, it revealed that its "Phone revenue declined $730 million". Based on its earlier financial disclosures, that means the company's phone hardware revenue fell to just $5 million for the entire quarter ending March 31, 2017. During Microsoft's earnings call today, its chief financial officer, Amy Hood, acknowledged this, stating that there was "no material phone revenue this quarter". The outlook for the next few months is similarly bleak, as Hood predicted "negligible revenue from Phone" in the coming quarter.
Microsoft could realize that iOS is starting to suck and some people dont like Android. Make a nice phone with all the good points of the others, security, good camera, an analogue audio jack, music/podcast player that rocks, and runs full Office, and AD/Exchange tools? I think they could take a chunk of the market very easily so long as it was a slow POS. Forget the Surface that is both an average tablet and a bad laptop, we want phones that do everything, and everything well. iOS used to have that crown.
iOS 10 blows chunks on an iPhone 6 even, its slow and the UI changes seem to be for the sake of change vs an actual improvement over iOS 9!
Android compared to iOS still seems clunky, unfinished and illogically organized/confusing, and apps want to access everything, why does a calculator need to access my SMS or addressbook? Its all or nothing the last time I checked, iOS at least makes it easy to turn off/on what apps can access.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What is the tech world coming to if we lose our grip with Monty Python?
If one has a Lumia, then one can still use it in the ways that one uses a cellphone. Talk, send text messages, use Bing maps for directions, listen to music, watch videos... I don't see any of that stopping. Is there an en masse migration of services to VoLTE-only that would make a Lumia unusable? So that it couldn't be used for Legacy GSM networks?
I agree that the Windows Phone platform has been stagnant, but that only matters if one is heavily into apps and is seeing them pulled from the Windows Store. But for the basic things that a phone does, Windows Phone is still fine. While there were complaints about the original tiles in Windows Phone 8, the look & feel of Windows 10 Mobile has been pretty fluent, and the only thing it lacks is a good app ecosystem. Heck, I'd argue that it's the best in work environments if Windows is the main OS being used - both for servers as well as laptops
lets push a stupid retarded dead phone operating system onto ....THE DESKTOP USERRSSSSSSSSS
oh wait failllll lets screw them by forcing it and then making them pay monthly for this ...hahaha
whose ever in charge thelast few years FIRE THE WANKER.
and your detection of humans is lacking ....hte line over it made it look like it might be HUMBLING
rather it was Humbing
Windows phone was born dead...with any M$ OS on it, it was destined to fail from the start! Like the Zune, it never had the slightest chance at all!
The only FACT in this story is Amy Hood's comment regarding WP revenues. Everything else is speculation and opinion.
This is nearly identical to the story that was posted here a few weeks ago declaring Windows Phone is "Officially Dead". Only Microsoft can make such a claim and they haven't to date.
I happen to agree with the author's assessment, but I don't like an opinion piece being disguised as a news report. As a loyal WP user, I won't be buying any new ones until I see more commitment from the company.
Let the Dephonestration begin!
Headphone jack !!
SD card slot
NFC
FOSS OS
Removable battery
Extended battery available
Dual SIM
Full disk encryption
Stingray detection
Camera with LED flash
Matte screen
I distinctly remember Gartner forecasting that Windows Phone would become the second most used smartphone OS, just slightly behind Android. Usually, their forecasts are super accurate even going 20 years into the future. And it was obvious at the time: Windows Phone had doubled its market share from 0.4% in 2011 to 0.8% in 2012. From this rich dataset, Gartner did they only sensible thing to produce a forecast: They assumed the same growth rate for the coming years and predicted 1.6%, 3.2%, 6.4%, 12.8% to 25.6% in 2017. Forecast for 2018 was 51.2% and for 2019 102.4%. Despite all the headlines, I think Microsoft are on track to achieve Gartner's 2019 forecast.
RIP-dead. Send-flowers-dead. Worm-food-dead.
"It's pining!"
"It's not pining, it's passed on! This is an Ex-Phone!"
Probably something like "I hope the basketball team I own, the Clippers, win tonight!" He is rich and you does cool stuff, you are poor and make sarcastic comments about things he said five years ago at some business meeting. What a sad, sad man you are.
I personally hope MS keeps it alive in some form. 2 competitors is far too few...
Successful phase 3. Extinguish.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I use that forum too and if it says it is dead that means alot.
I was hoping it would take around 20% marketshare just for healthy competition even if I do not use it anymore as this would benefit everyone. :-(
It is not WindowsCE (which sucked) and was a much different and better OS. It usess the same kernel as Windows Server 2012 R2! I loved the UI. Windows 8 rocked on a phone and the back and forward feels more natural than Android. It was stable and very lightweight and ran easier on slower but battery saving cpus. The tiles give you the notifications for news events perfect at a quick glance.
MS got it backwards with a start menu on WindowsCE and a phone UI on the desktop. Windows Phone should have come out in 2009 if it were to survive. Also WIndows Universal Apps or UWP was not mature until last year! If this was there in 2009/2010 it could have had significant marketshare and be a much needed 3rd player and kept IT and programmers jobs and not made --webkit CSS extensions standard.
My mom who is 68 years old and has dying eye sight and is techno illerate loves her $50 Windows Phone Nokia 640 unlocked. No way could Android run as good for that cheap for $50. The big tiles make it easier for her to see and understand what each tile does.
But it makes no sense to buy one as I did not want to invest $500 into a dead platform so I went back to Android 18 months ago. Even if Neowin of all places admits it now it is time to move forward. Ironically this is what killed Unix for Windows. People wanted standards and no one wanted to pay lots of money for Unix or a Commode as everyone was using Windows. Now MS got hit in reverse by the same logic.
http://saveie6.com/
As we witness the end of this sad tale, let us not forget that Microsoft tried to hijack Nokia's rabidly loyal userbase by planting one of their own as CEO and switching the company to WP, only to be universally rejected. They killed the top-selling smartphone system of the time (Symbian) and the new system that everyone was hyped for (MeeGo), all to peddle a late, rushed, still unfinished piece of crap that no one wanted.
So, good fucking riddance to stillborn WP, the mobile equivalent of "this is why we can't have nice things" (and by "nice things" I mean MeeGo).
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ballmer wasn't wrong, he just didn't realize that consumers would put up with that. However, Microsoft learned these lessons and applying them with Win10 desktop.
At least their Zune business is alive and well.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Microsoft is still dominant in the OS and Office markets. And that's it. They have failed to dominate the internet, cloud, browsers, serves, database, embedded, phones and everything else they have tried. With the possible exception of Xbox. I regard this as strong evidence that Microsoft sucks, and wonder what life would have been like if we had been spared their OS and Office products as well.
What really sucks is now I have dead Windows Mobile stuff stuck in my desktop OS.
It seems like I've heard this news before only for Microsoft to change its mind and try again. How many times has it been left for dead only to be resurrected? I've lost count ....
I'd not heard anything about Windows phones for quite a while when this article came up. Just checked the websites of the three main wireless companies in my area. None of them carry any phones using Windows.
DEAD
(insert "Bring out your dead" Monty Python joke here)
#DeleteFacebook
Anyone want to buy an Amazon Fire Phone?
The author wrongly assumed that Microsoft's phone business is the manufacture and selling of cell phones. Microsoft's phone business is in patents, and it brings in far more money from patents that it does phones.
Reports range from 2 to 6 billions dollars every year in profits just from Android.
https://www.howtogeek.com/1837...
https://fossbytes.com/microsof...
Samsung alone pays Microsoft 1 billion per year
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...
Making handsets is simply a convenient way to stay in the patent creation business.
I still like my Windows Phone, and my next one will be a Windows Phone, as well. The UI is much better than the other two.
I don't respond to AC's.
https://mspoweruser.com/41823-...
Been a lot longer than a year!
iOS 10 blows chunks on an iPhone 6 even
My wife has an iPhone 6 and iOS 10 performs pretty well on it, and has a number of substantial improvements from iOS9... if nothing else the messaging app is much better and what do most non-technical people use anyway?
On top of that are the invisible things like allowing call management apps and other app improvements possible on iOS10, and it has been nicer for her than iOS9 was.
We'll see if that continues to hold through other iOS updates but she'll keep the phone 2-3 years more probably, Which will be fully supported unlike Windows phone going forward...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Microsoft is the last to know.
I already sold my soul to Microsoft a long time ago, and now I have to pick between splitting it with either Apple or Google...
(No, I haven't sold my soul to Google yet, not even in search).
RIP
Water is wet .... news at 10.
I'm sure you phone will work fine, but the software that was supposed to be designed for Continuum won't ever be written of there's no market for it. Continuum is that, 'plug a device into a cradle and us it as desktop computer' thing they were pushing.
Which in turn has a knock on effect on Microsoft's Universal Platform, which has no purpose now. Nobody will spend money writing portable code for a non-portable market.
MS in turn would take a hit from this, but Google seems unable to get their platform together for larger than 10 inch tablets. All the android stuff is designed to run on battery limited platforms, operated by fingers. If you ever try Google Earth on Android, you can't even zoom out when using a mouse, because its pinch-zoom only with NO ZOOM ON THE FOOKING MOUSE.
Dear Google, if you're not prepared to implement mouse wheel zoom, (or if it has a patent problem), then can you at least implement it as a two-finger mouse zoom.
e.g. press BOTH mouse buttons, and it's like two diagonal fingers on the screen, move left and right to move the pinch closer or further horizontally. Move it up and down to pinch close or further vertically. i.e. two finger *mouse* pinch zoom, that can be used on existing apps without forcing additional work.
Likewise a lot of their stuff REQUIRES fingers on a touch tablet.
You can't close an app, you can only back back back back .... exit... which is stupid and yet Google are so smug they won't fix it.
You can't ensure apps will be allowed to run if they're not the foreground app, because Android will shut them down at the blink of an eye. They are supposed to recover quickly and perfectly when reloaded, but that's usually impossible. They usually lose their state.
Apps can't run in the background unless they also put an item in the notify. Which is why you see "USB is connected, tap here for options" items no notify. Suppose to be to stop battery hogs, but has no purpose on an Android desktop or TV or device designed for business apps.
I am hanging onto my Windows 7 machines until MS releases an OS with a Windows 7-like UI. If Windows 11 doesn't have a normal UI I may have to switch to Mac or Linix. I have hopes for 11 though, because they say to avoid all even-numbered Windows releases. So far the advice has been spot on.
I have W10 on my phone and have never had it try to restart spontaneously. Of course, it's old enough that it's *not supported* so that may have something to do with it. MS' recent announcements about 1703 on phones suggest that your imaginary problem will become no problem unless by some miracle you have one of the few Windows Phones (a subset of an infinitesimal market share) that are less than 3 years old and therefore likely to upgrade.
Alternative: reset your phone, which if it originally came with W8 will probably roll back to that. No spontaneous restarts for them. Or use tools from Win Insider program to roll it back.
Going forward, can I get the WinPhone user interface (tiles, live or otherwise (Win8 didn't have live tiles, mostly) instead of icons; scrolling "start" page so less-often-used stuff can be there but "below the fold;" easy customization ("desktop" picture, colors, size of tiles, etc.). Yes, there are major differences between W10 and Android/Linux under the hood, but there seems to be no reason that the visuals and general operation can't be sympathized. MS has its major mobile apps on Android anyway, often updating there before (or instead of) for Windows phones. Frankly, the WinPhone UI/shell works better for my aging eyes and phat phingers than the old-school icons-on-a-screen approach of Android.
Beaten by Linux.
(Monkey boy got one thing right.)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I am hanging onto my Windows 7 machines until MS releases an OS with a Windows 7-like UI.
While you're waiting, you can dual-install Linux and have that right now. (KDE)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Cool, so we will soon be able to identify die-hard Windows Mobile users by their carting around a desktop and mobile power supply?
A year or two ago Microsoft offered our company money and even some engineers to help to port our mobile product to Windows phone. Since we were really strapped for engineering resources, which we would still have to devote to the port despite the assistance, but not short on cash, we turned them down because we felt our other priorities were more important than Windows phone. We must have been the minority to do so because they were incredulous at our rejection. Just as well it seems.
Something I've consistently noticed about people with WinPhones (myself included) is they freaken love them. I've owned all three (iPhone, Android [LG, Sony], and Nokia/Win. I liked my iPhone, but I love my WinPhone. Even in this post there are fanboyz selling this product.
Which makes me wonder, how did this happen. iPhone certainly has advocates -people who love them and will sell them for Apple by word of mouth. Even Android does (but to a lesser extent) in the case of some higher end phones like the Samsungs. But WinPhones covered every pricepoint and were roundly loved by there owners. Where is the failure here? I just don't get how a really good product dies.
Hope you never escape the furthest depths of Hell.
As usual, Windows phone users are flabbergasted.
Both of them.
I'm on the Insider program, and my Lumia 640 gets more updates in a month than either my Android 4.3 and 6.0 have ever gotten throughout their entire lifetime.
Seriously, when walking out of the store, Android feels like abandonware. At least I know the known vulnerabilities are getting addressed on WP. On Android...the list is just getting bigger over time.
I wonder if this means they'll stop trying to turn Windows UI into an phone OS...
Who am I kidding, that ship has long since sailed... sigh.
The Digital Sorceress
for your tragic loss - only $200m this year.. It's a shame they had to drag Nokia down with them..
This time, Microsoft, you may not consider yourself middle-fingered - you ARE middle-fingered.
With UWP there will be apps, but only if developers specifically export to a Phone device target. (UWP isn't universal for all devices automatically, you still have to build a specific interface for each target device, it's only underlying program functions that are portable) Still there is hope.
Except they are not even in stock for months at a time, it seems like MS doesn't even care about selling them
too many damn fucking m$ shills on this site lol...
anyways if your phone can't run the app store or play store then throw that phone the fuck out the window...
it's simple as.
period.
Plenty of people are still in denial, and that's just the tip of the zealot iceberg....
All the years of them doing stupid, evil stuff to their customers and the industry as a whole has come to roost in this one. Nobody wanted them to succeed and then dominate and lock in another tech industry segment. Combine this with the lead Google and Apple had and they were doomed.
The REALLY sad part in my mind is what Microsoft should have been: when they were fighting IBM for control of the PC market, it looked like they were going to be the champions of openness and user choice. If they had only continued down that path, they could have been so much more (think of a "trustworthy Microsoft" and what they could have done for things like digital payments - their board of directors should have fired BG all their decision makers over that miss.)
I'm conflicted about this. Although I'd never own one, I felt it was important for Windows Phone to continue as competition (however feeble) against Android and IOS. It's important to have multiple vendors pushing each other to excel.
I'm worried now about Microsoft tablet. Of all the tablet makers, Microsoft seems the only one who at least pays lip service to content *creation* rather than mere content consumption. If Microsoft fails in the tablet market (which could easily happen, considering all the other missteps they've made) the message could easily be that nobody wants to create content on a tablet, which is profoundly untrue. Its that there haven't been good solutions yet.
I'm saying all of this not as a Microsoft fan. I run Winders because it runs the Adobe suite and I can't justify the cost of a mac. (I can build a PC to my specifications for a fraction of the cost.) The OS is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If the Adobe suite ran on Linux, M$ and Apple could both go screw.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Was it ever alive?
Hmm, ever heard of Windows Phone 7... the iPhone killer OS (Android was not consequential enough in Microsoft's eyes to be considered a competitor when they were working on WP7) that had no upgrade path to Windows Phone 8 for chumps that bought Windows Phone 7 Phones?
At least some phones got Windows 10 upgrades... that's at least a partial promise fulfilled by Microsoft. Better than nothing.