14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft hasn’t even mentioned phones in the company’s most recent earnings report, and this isn’t really a big surprise, as the software giant isn’t very keen on keeping its mobile ecosystem alive these days.
Instead, Microsoft looks set to step away from phones completely, and now it’s believed that the company is targeting to complete the Windows Phone wind-down by the end of this current quarter.
Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott said in a tweet that “Microsoft's wind-down of its phone business is ‘expected to be completed by the end of the current fiscal year.’ That's the end of June,” while Mary Jo Foley added that “MS' GM Investor relations Chris Suh just said to me there's effectively no revenue in the phone segment, at this point.”
In other words, this is pretty much the last quarter when Windows phones are still relevant for Microsoft, even though the most recent financial results were negligible to say the least.
Windows 10 Mobile now in maintenance mode
Even though Microsoft promised to ship the Redstone 3 update coming in September to mobile phones are well, there are controversial rumors out there on the future of Windows 10 Mobile.
While some say that Microsoft will continue to invest in the platform, with signs that even a new phone running Windows 10 Mobile could launch by the end of the year, others indicate that Redstone 3 is by no means a major update for phones, but only a small pack of improvements that Microsoft internally refers to as feature2 update.
The number of improvements that Windows 10 Mobile devices are getting with the Creators Update is also extremely disappointing, and Microsoft reduced the number of supported phones to only 13, leaving plenty of popular models behind for what it calls compatibility reasons.
Without a doubt, Microsoft is slowly but surely moving towards the end of Windows phones, but for some reason, the company remains tight-lipped on pretty much everything regarding its mobile plans. We’ll see what happens at the end of the current quarter, but don’t expect any good news on the mobile front.