HACKER Q&A
📣 banjomet

Why didn't Microsoft truly compete when it comes to phones?


My hypothesis is that they were afraid of an antitrust lawsuit. If they had chosen to compete, Microsoft would have been broken up. I really liked the idea of Continuum[0] and I know that Microsoft makes $5-$15 per Android phone[1] but I think they still should have competed.

[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum [1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/

  👤 thesuperbigfrog Accepted Answer ✓
1) Poor Timing: They shipped third in a crowded and competitive market where Android and Apple were already established players.

2) Insufficient Apps: they did not get enough developers creating applications for the Windows Phone ecosystem to have a compelling enough platform that was self-sustaining. They even started to build "app bridges" to make it easy to port Android and Apple apps to Windows Phone, but ultimately gave up after a few years of trying with little to show for it.

👤 mister_hn
I'm not convinced that it was because of poor timing, but just because of bad App environment. Look what's doing Huawei lately: kicked out of Google Services, it's a well established Phone maker, but it's losing quotas really fast, because their alternative OS (still a fork of Android) doesn't offer important applications to date (e.g. WhatsApp, Banking Apps, Payment Apps and so on), so I believe Microsoft was just crushed because developers weren't attracted by the platform a the buyers weren't interested.

The phones actually were pretty good. The Lumia 920 was really amazing.

👤 ianceicys
Core vs Context. Phones\Mobile wasn't see as a core area for multiple business units. Mobile\Phone was seen as context at Microsoft until it was too late.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140817131527-27177208-core-...

👤 the_hoser
Timing. They waited too long to enter the market, and with two well-established platforms, there just wasn't room for a third, no matter how good it was.