Saying No to Surface Phone (Premium Only)

For the past few years, speculation about a Surface phone has only intensified despite the failure of the platform on which it would run. I don't know if Microsoft still plans to release this device. But it shouldn't do so.

Note: One thing I am sure of is that Surface phone will not make an appearance at this month's Windows 10 event.

As we all know, Microsoft is in a transition period. The cash cows of the past---Windows, Office, Server---are fading, and the software giant's big cloud computing bets for the future face stiff competition and will almost certainly not achieve the lofty successes---financial and otherwise---of the past.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been rightfully credited with seeing this situation and addressing it head-on. But there's only so much this company can do in the face of such sweeping industry changes.

These kinds of transitions are never pretty, but they are arguably unavoidable. Microsoft simply got caught in a familiar trap that eventually snares all industry-dominant firms: The product that brought them such great success was simply supplanted by something new and different. And they couldn't change with the market because they were still raking in such heady revenues at the time that the change began. By the time the threat evolved into a clear extinction event, it was too late.

Look, you know this story. You know that Microsoft tried to repeat its Windows success with other products to increasingly diminishing returns. And you know that it eventually just tried to copy Apple, one of the two big companies that supplanted it in personal computing, and that this mad behavior led to disasters like Zune.

It also led to Surface.

Sporadic talk of "billion dollar quarters" notwithstanding---those are revenues, not profits---Surface will likely never be a huge business. Thanks to several billion dollars in research and development, a $900 million write-down related to a disastrous foray in tailoring the legacy Windows OS for modern ARM chipsets, and some of the worst reliability that the PC market has ever experienced, Surface has had a troubled history.

And now Surface is apparently plotting a phone.

I assume I don't need to explain Microsoft's far more disastrous history with phones. But when will Microsoft learn the lesson of its $8 billion Nokia boondoggle? Does anyone really believe that the Surface brand is strong enough to save Windows phone? Isn't the reverse more likely, that Windows phone will drag down Surface with it?

Look, I loved Windows phone more than anyone. I wrote the first-ever Windows phone book in mid-2010. And I gave away my second Windows phone book for free, as a gift to that community. But it's 2016, and that dream is over. At some point, we all need to accept uncomfortable realities.

But a Surface phone? That makes no sense. A few obvious reasons:

Surface has already failed three times with ARM. Surface RT triggered the aforementioned $900 million ...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC