With the rise of AI, Microsoft probably regrets killing Windows Phone

@darkkite @maegul From the outside, it also seems like there was some corporate politics involved.

Apple was making its comeback thanks to Mac OSX, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.

Samsung was toying with its own OS (Tizen), apps, and online services (Bixby).

Google responded by toying with hardware itself, including Glass, Nest, and at one point even buying Motorola.

So it looked like all the big tech companies were going to try to copy Apple by trying to own the full tech stack.

The then-CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, responded by trying to reposition his firm as a "devices and services" company. So he ended up with the XBox, Zune, Kinect, Kin, and Surface.

Then he went all-in with a takeover of Nokia.

Soon afterwards, Ballmer stood aside, and Satya Nadella took over.

Satya wanted to reposition Microsoft as a cloud-first company, competing against Google and AWS rather than Apple.

He kept the XBox and Surface, let the rest bleed money for a couple of quarters, wrote off their value as a loss, and then killed it off.

They had one too many miscues with updating Windows Phone and breaking compatibility. WP7 devices couldn't upgrade to WP8. They waited until WP8.1 to roll out the WinRT platform with cross- compatability between PC and mobile apps. Then 10 died before they could get the Android bridge stuff working.

Their app problem was made worse by Google's direct sabotage. They were constantly taking down any third party YouTube app and at one point were even jerking Microsoft around -- offered to allow MS to develop a YT app in partnership with Google. Everything was fine through development and testing until just before release. Then Google informed MS that the app was no longer acceptable, and they were required to use only HTML5 and no native code.

Yeah, I stuck with Windows Phone very nearly to the end, but the lack of apps just made it totally unsustainable for anyone with any kind of social life that extended beyond SMS and email.

Like so many others that have chimed in from similar posts - I LOVED my windows phone. the UI was just so good. But yeah no apps.

Microsoft had their own VR platform, called windows mixed reality, but it seems they gave up development for it like a year or 2 ago since they laid off all the devs working on it. The last windows mixed reality headset thats still even relevant is the HP Reverb G2. They still have the hololens though. They also bought a VR chatting app called Altspace VR which they shutdown a couple months ago. I don't see them going further into VR from their past failures though until its too late.

I hear that the HP Reverb G2 experience is pretty bad these days now that theres no more updates to windows mixed reality as more bugs pop up the more windows gets updated.

undefined> Apple is dipping their toes into XR, I wonder if microsoft will follow them later for another chance of the mobile market

Hololens was a thing like, 7 years ago. If anything, Microsoft beat them to this punch, but with a product that sucks so you don't hear about it.

I feel like W10 Mobile is what killed it. 8.1 was great. 10 was so unstable I had to buy a new phone. Slowest phone I've ever owned and apps crashed regularly.

Really, smartphone experience on android being smooth depends heavily on your phone.

I had a Galaxy A52 5G until recently. The processor should totally be enough for any usage that's not games. The thing is though, while it's enough, it doesn't feel fast.

I now have a xiaomi 13 I got for the phenomenal price of 600 bucks, and man, everything that was choppy and slow now just feels so fluid and fast.