Has Microsoft Thrown in the Towel on Windows Phone?
1st of all, I want to state that I have been out of the loop on what is going on with Windows Phone from the time I quit writing for GottaBeMobile until a few weeks ago. I honestly don’t know what the latest and greatest Windows Phones are right now. I also want to have it be known that I was one of the biggest Windows Mobile / Windows Phone evangelists online for a while. I was a Microsoft MVP Windows Phone/Windows Mobile,/Pocket PC/Zune from 2003 to 2010 when I resigned from the program. What I am getting at is that I am not a “Microsoft Hater”, I am quite the opposite.
I supported everything Microsoft did until the point that they shut down ChevronWP in 2012. That was the final straw for me. I didn’t like the lack of apps for Windows Phone. I didn’t like that they closed off the OS like Apple. I just didn’t see good things to come for Windows Phone and I think I was right.
What has prompted me to write about the subject is because of the news that Paul Thurrott posted today about Microsoft selling customized versions of the Samsung Galaxy S8 in their stores.
“A Microsoft customization is applied to the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ Microsoft Edition when the devices are unboxed and connected to Wi-Fi,” a Microsoft representative told me this morning. “This customization ensures customers a best-in-class productivity experience with Microsoft applications such as Office, OneDrive, Cortana, Outlook and more.”
So, Microsoft is going to sell an Android device with their suite of apps. That sounds a lot like they are throwing in the towel to me. Over the last few years, Microsoft has developed many apps, some of them great, for iOS and Android at the same time as trying to keep Windows Phone going.
I left Windows Phone for Android, returned, and left again for good in 2012. I wrote an article that same year that explains it well, but basically, I loved the interface of Windows Phone, but hated the lack of app support. In the last 5 years, I have owned every version of the Galaxy series except the S7 and I won’t be getting an S8 either. I am quite content right now with the Google Pixel XL.
The funny thing about my use of Android is that I keep trying to turn my Android phones into Windows Phones. All but one of these screenshots is a version of a “Windows Phone” look alike on my Android phones. The far left was on my iPhone 4 in 2012. (post | video) The next one was on my Galaxy Nexus in 2012. (post | video) The 2nd one from the right was last year on my Nextbit Robin. (Twitter) The final one was on my Pixel XL a few weeks ago and I quickly abandoned it for a KLWP theme that did all the hard work for me, but I didn’t like it much. (Twitter)
My point is that I think Windows Phone is finally going to die despite rumors that they are working on something still. Some people on the Windows Phone Reddit sub keep posting job listings like this:
The jobs are gone now, but I found this quote from one of them. Here’s one that is still live at the time of this post.
Windows Phone seems to be dead now.
I could be wrong. I’ll let my old Windows Mobile friends tell me how wrong I am, if I am.
Here are a couple of other links from a few of my old Windows Mobile friends talking about this:
I really enjoyed the Aximsite/Mobilitysite days and I wish that Microsoft would have made the mobile OS race a 3 way race instead of being dominated my Apple and Google.
