Satya Nadella, the chairman and CEO of Microsoft, acknowledged that the company made a big did he say “big mistake” in exiting the smartphone market and that it could have been handled better. He also said it was one of the most difficult decisions he had to make at the company.
Nadella recently shared his regrets over giving up on Windows phone and the mobile market in an interview with Business Insider. He acknowledged that this his decision, which drew a lot of attention and criticism.
Nadella revealed about regretting his decision regarding Windows phone when he was asked if there is any kind of strategic mistake or a wrong decision that he regrets.
"The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO —was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones,” the CEO told Business Insider.
Earlier, in 2019, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had also expressed his dissatisfaction with the Windows phone going out of production.
{{/usCountry}}Earlier, in 2019, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had also expressed his dissatisfaction with the Windows phone going out of production.
{{/usCountry}}Bill Gates told CNBC, "We’re in the field of doing operating systems for personal computers. We knew the mobile phone would be very popular, and so we were doing what was called Windows Mobile. We missed being the dominant mobile operating system by a very tiny amount. We were distracted during our antitrust trial. We didn’t assign the best people to do the work. So it’s the biggest mistake I made in terms of something that was clearly within our skill set. We were clearly the company that should have achieved that, and we didn’t. We allowed this Motorola design win, and therefore the software momentum to go to Android, and so it became the dominant non-Apple mobile phone operating system globally.”
When did Microsoft shut down its Windows phone?
The first Windows phone was released with the Windows Phone 7 operating system in 2010. While it was a success in the beginning, the phone soon started to see its downfall. Over the years, Microsoft made changes in the model and upgraded it, but the phone still could not keep up with the competitors. Eventually, in 2017, Windows phone was discontinued, and the devices were moved to the end-of-life stage on January 14, 2020, reports History-computer.com.