Microsoft Seems Ready To Give Up On Windows Phones, If Not Windows 10 Mobile

THE FUTURE OF Windows phones…might not be phones?

- Mark Hachman

Rumors and hopes for a category-defining Surface phone were not satisfied at Microsoft’s press event in October. The company didn’t even mention Windows 10 Mobile. With the collective market share of Windows phones stagnant at about 1 percent, customers and partners have to wonder why anyone should bother investing in Microsoft’s mobile strategy.

In an interview with ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft executive vice president of Windows and devices Terry Myerson was asked just that. But instead of committing wholeheartedly to Windows phones—or declaring that product line dead—Myerson tried a different tack: obscurity.

“Technically, there are really two things that are unique about Windows Mobile,” Myerson replied, when asked why Microsoft was, in Foley’s words, “wasting time” upgrading Windows 10 Mobile. “One is cellular connectivity and the other one is the ARM processors that are there.”