Rethinking Windows Phone

There’s probably no more contentious topic for Microsoft fans than the failure of Windows phone. But as the successor to this platform, Windows 10 Mobile is still a key part of Microsoft’s strategy for what it calls “more personal computing.”

So far, it’s been a bit of a mess. Its initial release, called version 1511 for November 2015, didn’t even ship until March 2016, and then only to some devices, and that pretty much says it all. But against all odds and common sense, Microsoft has continued to update this most unknown of mobile platforms. And when Windows 10 version 1607 start shipping this week, so too will Windows 10 Mobile version 1607.

This is actually kind of a big deal, for Microsoft, its hardware partners, and the declining audience of fans of the Windows phone platform. With market share now hovering well under .5 percent—that’s point five percent, or less than one half of one percent—Windows phone seems to have reached an obvious nadir. So why would Microsoft even bother to keep developing Windows 10 Mobile?

Simple: Because doing so costs the firm virtually nothing in every sense of the word. The hard development work and investment is already done, and keeping Windows 10 Mobile going is fairly easy now that it’s just part of the Windows 10 platform, which has a broader strategic value to Microsoft.

And while the end game here will never be a come-from-behind surprise resurgence in the mobile market that brings Android or iOS to their virtual knees, Microsoft doesn’t need that level of success. As a standalone platform, Windows phone failed. As part of Windows, Windows 10 Mobile can … succeed.

When I’ve written about the HP Elite x3 or, more vaguely, the supposed Surface phone, one valid justification emerges for this new generation of Windows 10 Mobile-based handsets: By eschewing the retail consumer market and focusing almost exclusively on businesses, Microsoft can position Windows 10 Mobile as just another product version, or SKU, of Windows 10, one that runs on PC-like mobile devices with very small screens.

This realignment may seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s not. In the retail smartphone market, leaders like Samsung and Apple sell many tens of millions of handsets every single quarter. By refocusing Windows 10 Mobile, Microsoft is abandoning its ill-fated dream of competing with those behemoths. And it is positioning Windows 10 Mobile, finally, for success.

In the “mobile first, cloud first” era, Microsoft success often means different things than it did 10 or 20 years ago, when the software giant would proudly tout Windows and Office license sales. Today, Microsoft is more concerned with putting its software and services in front of users wherever they are. And yes, that often means that we see mobile apps, in particular, appear on rival platforms like Android and iOS first.

But Windows 10 Mobile advances what I think of as the secret sauce of Microsoft’s in-house client computing platform, the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Finally, the dream of “write once, run everywhere” has escaped the least common denominator world of Java in the late 1990s and has become a first-rate environment for both developers and users.

The key is the ability of UWP apps to adapt seamlessly to the capabilities of the devices on which they run. That is, properly written UWP apps could run on devices as diverse as Surface Hub, HoloLens, PCs of all kinds, tablets of all kinds, phones, and even embedded IoT devices. And not just “run,” but run well, and expose unique functionality on each when appropriate.

Consider a very simple example: The Photos app that Microsoft ships with Windows 10. On PCs and tablets, the Photos app can be run full-screen or windowed, and it presents a simple UI for accessing your local and cloud-based photos.

On Windows 10 Mobile, this same app adapts to both the size and portrait orientation of the device, but it presents the same basic UI, with controls relocated when needed to accommodate the expectations of a phone user.

The apps diverge most obviously in their photo-editing capabilities. Thanks to the legacy of Windows phone, Photos lets you edit individual photos in other apps, and it provides very basic cropping, rotation, and auto-enhance functionality. But on the PC, Photos users are given a much richer set of in-app editing features—basic fixes, filters, light, color, and effects, each with their own individual features—as you would expect from a rich desktop PC app.

Put simply, Windows 10 Mobile—like Surface Hub, like HoloLens—is a proof point for UWP. And while the overall market size may be relatively small, supporting phones (and other devices) doesn’t cost developers very much at all. As is the case for Microsoft itself, supporting this platform can be advantageous with no material downside. Developers basically get this for free, and supporting phones is no harder than supporting tablets.

Windows 10 Mobile’s unique capabilities extend beyond its small screen, of course. The platform also offers a bridge to the PC world called Continuum that lets users transform their devices—using mobile and desktop docks, wireless display adapters, keyboards, mice, external displays and other gadgets—into PC-like devices. Thus, Windows 10 Mobile devices that support Continuum aren’t just phones.

And this, I think, is the real future of Windows 10 Mobile. Not only can UWP apps adapt to different form factors and capabilities, but they can do so on the same device. A productivity app like Microsoft Word Mobile may be useful for light edits on a phone screen. But when that phone is connected to a keyboard, mouse, and PC display using Continuum, Microsoft Word Mobile transforms into a full-powered creation station. It is literally the same app you might run on a Windows 10 PC or tablet.

This technology is transformative. And we—developers and users—get it for free.

There are of course challenges.

Windows 10 Mobile currently only runs on ARM hardware—though that is a rather arbitrary thing that I believe could change at any time—and thus cannot run legacy desktop Windows applications. This is a blocker for both businesses and consumers. But business customers with dedicated or leased datacenter infrastructure can at least remotely access desktop applications. I feel like this is a service Microsoft could offer via Azure and Office 365 as well, to both businesses and consumers: It’s not hard to imagine Office 365 subscribers getting remote access rights to full desktop Office applications from their mobile devices.

Less clear is how Microsoft can fix the mobile app gap: Windows 10 Mobile simply doesn’t offer enough of the right apps to be the only phone that most users own, and it never will. Some businesses will actually embrace the platform for this very reason—BYOD is a mess—but few consumers will ever be satisfied by the mobile app collection provided on Windows 10 Mobile.

As bad, today’s Windows phones are mostly terrible. The Lumia 950 and 950 XL are open embarrassments even to the Windows phone fans who would have proudly displayed their Lumia 1020, 1520, 930, Icon, or whatever to others in the past. The HP Elite x3 will help, a lot. As might a Surface phone, if that ever happens.

But even on today’s lackluster phones, the platform itself is actually pretty solid. Despite some heavy and important losses in the transition from Windows Phone OS 8.x, Windows 10 Mobile still provides a more usable user experience than the the Android and iOS systems that dominate the market. This is, of course, what most Windows phone holdouts point to when asked about their continued allegiance: They just can’t handle the notion of going to the unsophisticated whack-a-mobile UIs still found on Android and iPhone.

The failure of the Windows phone platform has understandably triggered a lot of angst and introspection in the Microsoft community. And as a clear-eyed and plain-spoken messenger of this news, I’ve found myself the subject of abuse by those who also wish the platform had succeeded or, in some cases, are still openly in denial. But don’t let emotion—or wishful thinking, or misplaced blame—get in the way of what’s really happening. As an ongoing retail consumer concern, yes, Windows phone has failed.

But Windows 10 Mobile? I see a road to success there. And while it may not be the outcome many of us were hoping for, it’s a much better fate than many believe is possible, and a real future for a platform that many of us still care about very much. So let’s embrace this future together. And see where Continuum, the HP Elite x3, and perhaps even Surface phone take us. That we’re even talking about the future is perhaps the best news of all.