Wait a minute, has Microsoft ever possessed the crown of mobile OS? Yes,there was a time when not only smart phones but iPod were not yet invented. Windows mobile and Palm were dominant forces for the ‘mobile devices’ named PDAs.
But Microsoft has never been successful in the smart phone era despite its numerous attempts. It officially admits its defeat a year and half ago. You may wonder what held Microsoft back? Microsoft thinks it’s because developers never back them up. In my humble opinion, they confused the cause with the consequence. The seed of failure has been long planted. Long story short, the microkernel based NT architecture brought the great glory to the software giant, but it is more resource demanding and less efficient comparing with Linux/Unix offspring. Microsoft labeled NT to be hybrid kernel later, but nevertheless for a long period of time, it could not deliver the same user experience as what iOS or Android did on a resource scarce platform such as the smart phone. In fact, this is not the first time we saw this. If you recall, in the early days there were two Windows families — the Windows NT (NT, 2000, Vista…) family and Windows 9x (95, 98, millennium) family. People were hesitate to install the Windows NT on their personal computers because it was too bulky and slow. Eventually the hardware picked up and overthrown the concern. As often the case when environment changes, inherited assets could become liability. This time, it is just revealed the same weakness on the mobile platform. Even worse, smart phones need to run day-long on batteries paper thin. To be fair, the latest release of Windows 10 Mobile run comparably with iOS and Android. But it’s just too late too little, there are significantly less apps to draw users interest and significantly less users to draw developers’ attention.
Microsoft long hoped developers would support Windows Phones because applications could be written once and run across three platforms — the phone, the tablet and the laptop, which I think it was another mistake. It was difficult to write a software running beautifully on both phones and laptops, and why it is necessary since they are two independent devices that usually serve different purposes?
However it doesn’t mean things should stay in this way.Will there be a day all three platforms to be unified as one? People will not carry a phone, a tablet and a laptop but a single device? In an ideal world, I will be only bringing a phone no matter I’m at home, in the office or in a car. I may occasionally put it on a docker if I need a big screen and a keyboard. The question in my mind is not whether but when and by whom?
There are devices on the market which work both as a tablet and a laptop. For example this and this.
With phones going to foldable, the barrier between phones and tablet are blurred.
The hardware specs especially the screen size used to be the decisive factor separates the three platforms. Now latest smart phones are fairly comparable with laptops.
However there is an even harder barrier to be cracked. That is the software, more specifically the OS. Phones and laptops are running on different operating systems. Tablets can go either way but not both. There is a need to consolidate the OS across three platforms before we see a real unified device. Microsoft may finally have a chance to do something in this regard and the enormous software have been built on Personal computers being real assets this time.
Frankly speaking, Apple has an equal chance if not more. If apple can consolidate macOS and iOS, many people would rather to use a Mac compatible iPhone than a Windows compatible phone. Things are harder for Google. Probably this is the reason why Google is downplaying Android to focus its future on Chrome OS.
