Submitted by In a move that shouldn’t surprise OSAlert readers that much, Microsoft is writing off most of what it acquired from Nokia less than two years ago and will be laying off 7,800 people in its hardware division. According to Ars: “The hardware division includes the lion’s share of former Nokia employees, who became part of Microsoft last year. Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is leaving–this much we knew from last month–and Reuters says that Microsoft is also going to record an “impairment charge” of $7.6 billion dollars from the Nokia acquisition and perform a complete restructuring of its phone business. It’s a shame, considering that Windows Phone has actually shaped out to be a pretty good OS, and a mobile OS landscape with only two players is good for neither consumers nor OS enthusiasts.
Yeah, it’s a shame, I like Windows phone as an OS. The app gap is too big an obstacle, though.
Edit: and no flagship phone in how long? Dissipated their energy on all the low-end phones.
Edited 2015-07-08 16:41 UTC
Check the stats for the various models at someplace like Adduplex. The low end phones are the only ones that sold. That hasn’t changed since they first started offering them.
Worldwide WM 5/6 had almost as much market share as the iPhone does now. WP7 dissipated the bulk of their customers in a few quarters in spite of being liked by those that chose to use it and reviewers as well.
It is a shame it has come to this, the OS is quite good and the tools are miles ahead of what Android offers, stuck on Java 6 (partial 7 support only on 4.4 onwards), with broken support for C and C++ users.
However when I saw their talks about Android and iOS bridges, I did wonder if it would have suffer an OS/2 fate.
Instead they are killing it even before that.
Sad, really.
The scale of the MS phone business is being changed. Three tiers of phones with one to two new handsets per tier are planned for release annually. That’s a smart resizing of a business that has been horribly managed since Elop moved Nokia over to Windows phone. What happens in the next year or two may be a complete dumping of Windows phone by MS. For now, it’s just shrinking it down to a size that fits it’s financial performance.
The losses are in manufacturing, sales and marketing, mostly operating in Europe. Manufacturing will be exported to China like everyone else or somewhere cheap. As for Sales and marketing, Nokia had excessively large numbers of employees …….
Edited 2015-07-08 20:52 UTC
When you have huge cash reserve, as Microsoft does, and play in a market with fierce competition, as the mobile is, shrinking *do* looks like a first step in the path to dumping the business.
After reading the article, it looks to me as they are just downsizing the Windows Phone Hardware team. The OS team isn’t affected or am I missing something?
Regardless, I really like Windows Phone OS compared to the other alternatives out there. Android, although fast, is buggy and drains battery like crazy. And we’re not even going to go into how much the quality of iOS has suffered over the last few versions, my woes of which start at iOS 7.
Windows Phone has the right balance of visual appeal and hardware optimization. I’m currently using a Lumia 635 and it runs very fast and stable for only having 512 MB of RAM. So, whatever Microsoft did for Windows Phone, they seem to have done it right. And if Microsoft will also be downsizing the Windows Phone OS team, its a sad thing indeed.
Much like Linux the OS is good but people are not going to use it without better application support.
Why do all my newly posted comments show a score of 2? Does everyone start at 2 or do I have a massive surplus of Karma here?
Edited 2015-07-10 10:24 UTC
Totally agree. Shame of the matter is that companies aren’t making apps for it. I guess Windows Phone OS carries the stigma from older versions of the Windows Mobile environment, much like IE11 carries the stigma of older, less usable versions. IE11 actually shaped up to be a decent browser (having to test with it on a daily basis I feel confident in saying its unlike other IE versions) however because people hear the name and cringe they’re less likely to give it a chance.
Microsoft isn’t killing windows phone just reducing the hardware side.
In an announcement posted today (http://news.microsoft.com/2015/07/08/satya-nadella-email-to-employe…), Nadella said:
“We^aEURTMll bring business customers the best management, security and productivity experiences they need; value phone buyers the communications services they want; and Windows fans the flagship devices they^aEURTMll love.”
It’s a refocus and downsizing, not a cancellation.
Keep drinking that Kool-Aid! I am sure that this $7.8 BILLION write down and the firing of 7800 employees is just a “bump in the road”, right? I mean, it’s SURE to be successful someday, right? Windows 10 will change EVERYTHING, right?
Can I have whatever it is you are smoking? It’s apparently some really good shit!
I’m not sure where the hostility is coming from. I’m simply stating that Windows Phone is not being killed.
Will it be killed eventually? Perhaps, but it’s not being killed now.
If you don’t like Windows Phone, you don’t have to use it. That’s your choice. I happen to be a happy Windows Phone user. I’m not a Miscrosoft Fanboi or anything, I just like the interface and the functionality. It’s makes me sad to think that Microsoft may eventually discontinue it.
Choosing a phone should be based on personal tastes and the needs of the individual, not on a zealous loyalty to or an intense hatred of any certain brand. I don’t begrudge you your choice, please don’t begrudge me mine.
Ferocious gutting more like it. Windows Phone kaput.
Dumping Windows Phone ?
LOL
I would like to say something but the bias is clear enough by the title. Cheap gossip journalism. Luckily for all of us, there’s Jolla ready to rule the world…
Yeah, shitty article from Thom – as usual when it comes to WP.
I didn’t write or post this, as I’m on vacation in the Sicilian sun.
Have fun with your tech stuff!
Yeah, have fun with your shitty blog. Your and sometimes your colleagues inept opinions have slowly but surely killed this once interesting site. Time to move on. Have fun in Sicily. Hope you use your time there to think and decide to put this site out of its misery.
I’ve been a user for 9 years, but I see no reason to be anymore. I would appreciate if you would delete my account and any references to my username.
Edited 2015-07-09 14:58 UTC
Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
I am long time reader and don’t comment often but damn you are a real dumb ass so just had to…
First, you criticize someone who didn’t even write the post. You get called out on it and instead of being a man and admit you were wrong you go into full attack mode. That is a special kind of stupid…
Edited 2015-07-09 21:16 UTC
Douche much? wow. Sure, Thom and his colleauges have changed that much in 9 years? No. That’s you.
Methinks you have been predicting a Windows Phone takeover for 9 years now and just have to accept defeat.
Your complaints are lame and your attitude is nasty. It’s not funny or constructive. I can’t see your point, and I just got booted from a different site last month so I’m not the comment police
Thom — enjoy that sunshine, man. Nothing about gadgets matter when you are on vacation. With posts like this on your blog you deserve a holiday.
I got tired of waiting for a replacement for my Nokia 1020 so I moved on from the platform. The lack of flagship phones just turned me off, though the 930 was an okay phone it’s not really what I would call ground breaking so I skipped it. Maybe once Windows 10 comes out they’ll release something special, I’m not holding my breath though. I now use a BlackBerry Passport and could not be happier. I also don’t think I could ever use another phone without a file manager, one of the many, many, many reasons why I have never owned an iPhone. Though it’s mostly because of their arragance in not allowing their users to select their own default apps. Yes I know if they do about 90% of their user base will quickly turn their Apple phones into a Google centric one but who cares, free market and all, unfortunately they don’t believe in such thing’s, just conquering every market they enter. I honestly hate that company now, Microsoft was never this evil.
How about MS gets rid of the WP decision makers instead? IMO the problem stems from there.
Satya appears to have done that last week http://www.osnews.com/story/28634/Stephen_Elop_leaves_Microsoft
Not him. The other fellas from Microsoft.
Yeah, like Terry Myerson who dumped Windows Mobile for Windows Phone.
And who now has even more authority/responsibility as a result of the [latest] re-org.
They just had to buy Nokia. Without Nokia there wouldn’t have been Windows Phone. Without Windows Phone there wouldn’t be a Microsoft presence in mobile. Without a presence in mobile there is no future in the scale of Microsoft.
They just have to be in IOT for this same reason.
They just had to take this write-down as well. They are a publicly traded company and you cannot hide financial issues like this. Nokia is now valued inside Microsoft for what is was worth: Nothing.
They (Nokia) just had to sell. How could you resist an offer that gave you billions for something that was worth nothing anymore.
Microsoft messed up in the Vista era. They bet on the wrong things, couldn’t make them work and lost a couple of years with no improvements to Windows, Internet Explorer and especially mobile. Google and Apple rose during that time. Microsoft is still alive because they are so entrenched in the business world and they have enough money and talented people to try to turn the ship around. The jury is still out if they are going to be succesful in mobile, but it won’t be because they didn’t try. Nokia and BlackBerry were smaller and less diverse and are trying to reinvent themselves as well, but that really seems to be too late
What a load of bollocks. Windows phones are generic ARM hardware running Windows. They ONLY thing MS wanted was the Lumia brand. The Nokia hardware was worthless.
(mudwar?) Now THAT is a load of bullocks. As if all phones that have an arm CPU are the same? Basically ALL Windows Phones, Android and iPhones run on generic ARM hardware
Nokia was about 90% – 95% of the Windows Phone ecosystem. Without Nokia there was no Windows Phone. They were almost the only ones making hardware, basically the only ones that made really good 3rd party software, they had the Here Maps, the photo-apps, the camera-hardware, etc. So without Nokia, there really wasn’t a Windows Phone which is why Microsoft HAD to buy them, even though they really weren’t worth anything anymore
MS could have contracted LG, Huawei or a dozen different Chinese OEM to make their phones under the MS brand.
The reason MS bought Nokia was because the brand was so strong in developing countries like India. MS is deliberately targeting the bottom end of the market where the S30 feature phones were previously dominant.
I’ve got a Lumia 532. I can assure you that the hardware is basically identical to a low end Android model. The only real difference is the software.[WP 8.1 is vastly superior to Android IMO]
Edited 2015-07-09 23:01 UTC
I thought MS finally had it within their grasp, an o/s that worked everywhere… Windows phone is a good phone o/s, fast to operate on fairly puny hardware. The metro o/s only looks good on a phone, proving the value of its simple design. Get rid of windows phone, get rid of Metro. What was the point?
I guess the hardware guys (or at least some of them can) go back and work for the original Nokia on tablets for a while.