Microsoft have struggled forever to get a foot in the mobile device market, with a trail of failed products and mis-steps over the past years. Who even remembers Project Pink (here), the Kin One and Kin Two, or the time they bought Danger and then had a server failure and lost all their user’s data?
With Microsoft announcing recently that it’s haemoaging cash on it’s mobile business, and that Stephen Elop, the ex-Nokia chief and lead of the Mobile Devices Group, is out the door in the recent exec shakeup, you have to wonder just how much focus Microsoft is going to put on it’s promise of Windows 10 to be the OS to run on all device types. Maybe all devices as long as it’s not a Nokia phone, or all devices but not phone hardware coming from Microsoft. Which at this point this probably means any phone at all – without Nokia Windows devices, what devices are left?
I doubt anyone’s upset that we won’t see Microsoft phones running Windows 10, but it is sad that at this point, Microsoft’s failed acquisition of Nokia most likely means that Nokia, as a brand and as the phone, is now dead.