14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is investing a fortune to make Windows Phone more popular, but as far as Robert Scoble, a former company evangelist for Windows, is concerned, that’s not the right way to go.
Scoble said in an interview with GeekWire that Microsoft should actually abandon Windows Phone completely and focus on building Android devices, pointing to the small mobile market share currently held by the company as the main reason.
“The problem is that Microsoft has 4 percent market share for mobile. The reason for that is that they have no apps, and there’s no love for developers of apps. When you go to hackathons in San Francisco — and not Seattle, because San Francisco is the center of the world, not Seattle. Sorry, that’s the way it is,” he said.
“The real answer is, give up Windows Phone, go Android, and embrace and extend like you did with the Internet. But they don’t listen to me.”
Scoble, who spent three years at Microsoft, says that Satya Nadella indeed makes some pretty significant changes to the company and has what it takes to guide the company on the right path.
“Satya did something very smart. He made a deal with Apple. His team sat down with Apple, and said, ‘We are going to make a deal. You get rid of Google on that little iPhone thing, and we’ll put in Office.’ Brilliant. Now, at least Microsoft has a finger in the cool iPhone. Maybe they can build off that. That’s where I would be building off of,” he explains.
“But Windows Phone? I don’t know how you get developers excited by that. I don’t understand how you get influencers excited by that.”
Microsoft is changing, Scoble admitts, and Satya Nadella is the main responsible for this, especially because he’s trying to change the face of the company and make it more interested in customers and their feedback.
At the same time, employees do believe that Nadella is the right man for the job, and the new business model clearly brings a lot of benefits to everyone working for the company.
“The problem with Microsoft is that it’s so committee-driven and slow. It’s not a startup anymore. It’s a big-ass company with a lot of people. And let’s be honest — you work at a big company because it’s comfortable. You don’t have to work 80 hours per week and you get paid, have nice benefits, and the family is all happy. It’s collected a lot of those kinds of people and they are all in committees. Committees don’t do anything. I don’t know if Satya will change that. He’s trying,” Scoble pointed out.