14 DAY TRIAL // After last week’s announcement that Microsoft is cutting new jobs in the phone hardware unit, many rushed to predict the end of Windows Phone, but after the company’s press conference at WPC 2015, it has become clearer than ever that the Redmond-based tech giant isn’t giving up on mobile.
And now company CEO Satya Nadella says the very same thing, explaining that the three percent market share that Windows Phone currently own is not at a bad thing.
OK, it might not be big enough to let Windows Phone compete against Android and iOS, but this market share contributes to Microsoft’s growth in all businesses, not only in mobile.
Windows as a single platform
It’s not all about Windows Phone, it’s about Windows, Satya Nadella has explained, pointing out that Windows 10 brings together all the company’s platforms, so we should think at Windows as to just a single product that’s available across a wide array of devices.
“I'm not going to launch a phone a day. I'm going to focus on a few phones that actually grab share that, in fact, showcase our uniqueness. When you have three percent share of that (phone market), but you also have a billion desktops, you have Xbox, you have innovation in HoloLens; you have Band. It's a graph. It's not any one node. It is the entirety of the device family,” he went on to add.
Nadella has also reiterated that Microsoft won’t give up on Windows phones, not now and not anytime soon. Several devices will be launched later this year, and Microsoft hopes to see other OEMs join this effort and launch their very own Windows 10 Mobile devices. If they don’t, no problem, Microsoft will go forward all alone in the mobile business, Nadella says.
“We will do everything we have to do to make sure we're making progress on phones. We have them. Even today reinforced, again, yes, we will have premium Lumias coming this year. If there are a lot of OEMs, we'll have one strategy. If there are no OEMs, we'll have one strategy. We are committed to having the phones in these three segments,” he continues.
Windows 10 Mobile is projected to launch later this year, a few months after the debut of the PC version, but anyone can download preview builds on their devices by joining the Windows Insider program.