It’s a sad tale of what could have been. Joe Balfoire, Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, took it to twitter to accept the defeat of Microsoft’s Windows phones.
This comes as no surprise, Windows phones have not been making sales as the more popular Apple and Samsung take over the market. According to market research firm Kantar, Windows phones account for just 1.3 per cent of the market — from 2.4 per cent last year — in the US.
No new hardware or features will be created, but Existing supported phones will receive bug fixes and security updates.
This will effect devices that currently use Windows OS as well. Those include, the HP Elite x3, Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, Microsoft Lumia 950 and Nokia Lumia 930, among others.
After landing in stores back in 2010, the Microsoft product seemed like it could be the next big thing; with a high quality, finger-based user interface. The promising start; however, couldn’t be followed up on as they finally lost to their more successful opponents.
Microsoft should have stuck to what they do best, although the initial release of the Windows phone 7 was highly celebrated; they could not follow-up on it at all. The Windows phone 8, released in 2012, was a complete disaster.
Windows Phone 7 devices could not be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, leaving early adopters with phones that were basically dead. Moreover, the mere work of moving to the common kernel and APIs was such a huge undertaking that it didn’t give Microsoft much time to actually work on features and capabilities. Windows Phone 7 had a feature deficit relative to Android and iOS, and Windows Phone 8, rather than closing this feature deficit, was instead focused on updating and replacing the operating system’s core.
From stumble to other moved Microsoft, as they couldn’t add any more upgrades to the follow-up of the 8 in the form of the Windows phone 10 which had them lose even more loyal customers.
With this being said, there seem to be some red flags waving at Blackberry, who could become history in no time if they don’t change their ways.
