“Microsoft is further scaling back its flagging phone business, exiting the consumer market and cutting another 1,850 jobs,” Ina Fried reports for Recode. “As part of the move announced Wednesday, Microsoft will take a $950 million charge and cut what little remained of its Finland-based phone hardware business, unwinding the last of its disastrous $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s phone unit.”
“Last week, Microsoft announced separately that it was selling what was left of its low-end ‘feature phone’ business,” Fried reports. “Despite all the cuts — and having already seen its market share dip below 1 percent — Microsoft says it isn’t totally out of the phone-making business.
“The company insists it will continue to serve phones aimed at the business market and license Windows 10 to any other hardware makers that want to give Windows Phone a try,” Fried reports. “While the company said Wednesday to expect new Microsoft-made phone models, it declined to offer any specifics on its future hardware roadmap or to say why an even more decimated phone lineup will have greater appeal than the current one.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Without further ado, below are some memories of Microsoft’s funeral procession for Apple’s iPhone — attended by the FPSRR (Future Pink Slip Recipients of Redmond) — which these rocket scientists held in September 2010 (long after everyone else on the planet already knew they’d had their asses thoroughly beaten by Steve Jobs & Company).
Oh, wait, here’s just a bit of delicious ado first:
• IDC: Windows Phone to surpass Apple’s iOS by 2015 – June 10, 2011
• IDC: Windows Phone to surpass Apple’s iOS by 2016 – June 6, 2012
• IDC: Windows Phone will not surpass Apple’s iOS by 2018 – December 2, 2014Okay:
SEE ALSO:
Cue the funeral for Microsoft’s Windows Phone – April 22, 2016
Microsoft’s Windows Phone is Zuned – January 30, 2016
Beleaguered Microsoft’s moribund Windows Phone may finally be dead – January 7, 2015
Microsoft holds iPhone funeral procession to celebrate upcoming Windows Phone 7 release (w/ video) – September 10, 2010
<1%?! This is like Monty Python where the knight has all his limbs hacked off and his torso is on the ground and snarls as the other knight strolls past him, "Come back her so I can bite you!"
“It’s just a flesh wound”.
— Satya Nadella, in response to being asked about Windows Phone sales
Jumping from the burning platform onto the sinking ship then swimming to Krakatoa.
Yet this whole Microsoft phone fiasco was so predictable it almost took all the “Freude” out of Schadenfreude.” I knew MS would screw this up, but I never imagined it would be an $8 Billion screw-up.
1. They couldn’t license their mobile OS for the extortionist fees they were used to getting from PCs because Android was free.
2. They were much, much more dependent on the OEMs because battery life, power efficiency, weight and size were critical.
3. They couldn’t ever leverage apps to gain a foothold because Apple was the sovereign gatekeeper.
4. Then they waited too long to leverage apps as a potential cash cow because the app market established most app prices in the $1 – $10 range by the time they gave up their mobile Office fantasies.
5. They let the PC guys call the shots in the mobile space long after it was apparent that the PCs guys had no clue in the mobile space.
6. Their Wintel duopoly finally bit them in the butt because Windows and Office were COMPLETELY reliant on Intel chips which were HORRIBLE in the mobile space.
7. The fact that MS didn’t invent an end-to-end mobile app SDK-App store-eco-sytem much, much sooner is utterly stunning given that MS was supposedly a “software” company.
8. Of course, it didn’t help that even after Jobs showed them how a mobile OS should look, they still couldn’t figure it out. Rember Kin, and all the versions of their mobile OS that were incompatible with the previous version?
Microsoft shareholders should be screaming about the waste of money used to buy Nokia and develop the ow defunct line of Windows phones. Actually, smart investors sold their MSFT a long time ago.
I wonder what happened to the price of MSFT based on this news?? APPL drops like a rock after selling tens of millions of iPhones in a quarter (but not quite as many units as analysts hoped). Microsoft spent $B on a failed Windows phone effort and destroyed yet another company. How did investors respond?
Just used my iPhone to check…MSFT closed at $51.89, down $0.23. I guess it wasn’t a surprise.
Microsoft, making their smartphone as popular as the Zune.
Hey MDN folks, how about a toilet picture with the Zune and a MS smartphone.
Together in the same bowl.
Never hurts to have a laugh
Your wish has been granted…
Well, the relevant half…
Derek thank you, and Regular reader as well. I just look at one and the other and it’s a whole new theme.
Microsoft, keeps going flush after flush after flush.
…mem’ries, like the corners of your Zune,
sienna-colored excrete mem’ries,
of the way Ballmer T. Clown was…
(sniff)
Die M$onster, die!
Yeah!!! Loving the pics. Love to see the comedic return of Microsoft on MDN. I mean, they used to be entertaining us almost daily….Remember when we talked about M$ nearly everyday on MDN? Seems forever ago. Times have changed!
Windows Phone. DOA
Typical Microsoft. Just drag it out, until NO ONE cares, then quietly shut it down. I guess we’re not quite there yet…
does the moon care if dogs howl?
A pauper’s grave in Potter’s Field more likely? Funny how only tech companies stage lavish funerals with dancers and bagpipes when something’s new, instead of decently waiting until they actually die. Lumia we hardly knew ye.
but, are they beleaguered yet?
I feel sorry for all those who bought a Win phone last year on the promises of riches to come as long as the cough up the cash there and then. Actually I don’t, they deserve all they get from believing in the most untrustworthy bunch of chancers that ever weaselled their way into the public consciousness.
Makes you wonder what other failures will Surface?
Perhaps they should notify next of Kin, but it’s probably too Zune to say. I’m sure they are looking for bigger Vistas to roll over like a herd of Longhorn cattle to the slaughterhouse.
And this whole sordid story makes me WinCE.
Oh my goodness that was funny! I really appreciate puns and subtlety.
BTW, I live in a town of about a million with one of those depressing little Microsoft stores in the mall. So far, I can recall spotting only 2 Surfaces in the wild so far. There may be something under the surface of this story that bodes ill of another train wreck.
That video and MS saying iPhone is dead is just a world of buttttttt hurt to iPhone haters! Hahahaha 😛
I want to see them prematurely celebrating iPhone’s death again. And then an iPad version.
MDN: The IDC 2012 article (predicting Windows Phone to surpass iOS by 2016) is especially funny because in their last paragraph they talk about how “there will still be a healthy market for Blackberry phones.” Ummm, nope. Proof IDC just pulls their predictions out of thin air after a few tabs of LSD.
BTW, when was the last time you saw a Windows Phone commercial on TV? Haven’t seen one in at least a year. If MS isn’t even wasting money on advertising it anymore, it’s dead.
‘Microsoft says it isn’t totally out of the phone-making business.’
Yes, they are. Whether or not they’re ready to admit that yet is another thing entirely.
Note to Nutella: The road to recovery first begins with an admission that there is a problem. Get help. Soon.
NO!! Don’t get help, just DIE!
Microsoft will take a $950 million charge
Spend Microsoft! spend Spend SPEND!
You forgot about the other $7 BILLION.
How could I forget?! July, 2015:
Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown on Nokia
Where is Balmer, monkey boy, uncle fester!!!!!!!!
Damn I miss that guy.
Blahahahahaha
He wisely invested $2 Billion in a jinxed Basketball team
Forgive me a very loud and cruel chuckle. Couldn’t happen to a more clueless & clumsy company.
Two turkeys didn’t make an eagle.
Apple should buy 51% of Microsoft keep the few good programs like word excel PowerPoint and ax the rest
Power Point? WTF? I have not used that Turkey since the first (!) version of Keynote came along. Excel? Only if you’re a bean counter with an MS admin. The last product from MS I liked was the 2001 scroll wheel mouse, back when Apple was strictly single-button.
If they want to offer something that does not suck, they have to enter the vacuum cleaner business (old one but good one 😄).
As Microsoft are quitting consumer smartphones, does this mean that Steve Ballmer will relent and let his kids have iPhones instead of those horrid Windows phones? Or is it too late because they’re all grown up now, lives of their own—the psychological damage already done and in therapy for it no doubt.
BillyGates too, ruined his kids lives by forbidding them to have Apple products. They should jail both of them for child abuse.
What a stupid comment.
Damn I’ve been using the wrong rest room all these years
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