14 DAY TRIAL // Phones have remained a hot subject at Microsoft despite the company officially acknowledging the death of Windows 10 Mobile and admitting that no new features and hardware are planned.
But in the last 12 months or so, Microsoft has been dropping hints that something big might actually be prepared on the mobile front every once in a while, and whenever they were asked about such a project, company executives offered only vague answers that eventually led to more speculation.
This is what happened recently when Ralf Groene, head of industrial design at Microsoft, was asked during a Surface lab tour if the software giant still plans to launch a phone. “Who knows?” he told The Verge while laughing, once again making everyone wonder if there’s something that the company doesn’t share regarding its smartphone vision.
New Microsoft mobile device
More recently, the company has been rumored to be working on a mobile device similar to Courier, which was a digital journal project that never launched but which could inspire a new model developed by the Surface team.
While this isn’t exactly a phone, it could be the closest we could get in terms of mobile, as Microsoft appears to be more focused on making its apps and services available on Android and iOS than investing in its own mobile operating system.
Joe Belfiore, who at some point was the go-to person for everything Windows phone, said recently that Microsoft is no longer working on new features for its mobile platform and that no new hardware is on the radar.
Instead, Belfiore said, Windows 10 Mobile will continue to be supported with updates and patches, which means the platform has entered maintenance mode and there’s pretty much no reason for consumers to stick around. Belfiore himself recommended one consumer to switch to a different platform if what they want is apps, indeed confirming that Microsoft surrendered to Android and iOS in the mobile war.
