Over the past 2 years but mostly this last year we have witnessed a methodical decimation of their consumer efforts in order to focus on the Enterprise and Cloud. With them pretty much killing the Band and putting Phone on life support it is becoming very apparent that they don’t want to be in the consumer space. I am surprised they still push Xbox as hard as they do btw. It is becoming hard to recommend the Microsoft ecosystem. Even if they try to release a phone next year consumers will not buy because of broken trust.
Last remaining WP consumers have moved on to competing platforms and only the diehards are remaining. I have myself picked up a nexus 6p in April and have been using that on & off mostly trying to prove to myself that Android is not worth it. It is becoming very hard to do that as time goes on when in fact Android is getting the right updates and support from App makers and such. Now my 950XL is my secondary phone and started to use that only to check out insider preview updates. When Android merges with ChromeOS you will see more and more folks not using Windows anymore. This is already happening in schools where most kids are using Chrome Laptops, iPads and such.
From a developer standpoint it is very clear to me that using Windows as a development platform/workstation is on the way out as well. As my company is going through a major Windows 10 upgrade cycle I am seeing that about 40% of my colleagues have chosen to switch to a Mac instead.
If Microsoft thinks that I will keep using Office, .NET, and their other enterprise products even on competing platforms they are wrong. I will use what’s best on those platforms.
I think that myself and probably many of you are here because of the consumer side of Microsoft. I doubt that anyone looses any sleep over Sharepoint or PowerBI. I don’t care for a new IBM or Oracle.
Sorry for that rant.
4010
<p>Microsoft will never give up on consumers.</p>
<p>Windows Phone is so far ahead of the competition it hurts. The UI is buttery smooth and absolute delight to use. The live tiles are just gorgeous and provide so much invaluable information at a glance. Yes overall the platform is lacking some apps, but UWP is already yielding results. We’re getting some incredible new apps on the platform, and new releases are coming all the time.</p>
<p>iOS looks so dated, everything about it lacks innovation and delight. It won’t be long before iPhone is forgotten by all their customers. And Android is an absolute mess in terms of security, bad apps ported from iOS, and now companies at war with Google.</p>
<p>Windows Phone will be there to capitalise when both iOS and Android fades into oblivion.</p>
<p>Keep the faith.</p>