Microsoft CEO calls it a mistake to abandon Windows Phone and mobile devices
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has admitted that abandoning Windows Phone and mobile devices was a mistake. This is reported by The Verge with reference to Business Insider.
“The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO — was our exit of what I’ll call the mobile phone as defined then,” he said. “In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work.”
Windows Phone was discontinued a few years after Nokia’s phone business was written off. Since then, Microsoft has released the Android-based Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2 phones. However, without a successor and without software updates, the future of the series remains unclear.
Satya Nadella became the third CEO of the tech giant to admit that the company made serious mistakes in the mobile sector. He replaced Steve Ballmer and wrote off $7.6 billion related to Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s phone business.
Earlier, the company’s co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates said that his biggest mistake was that Microsoft lost to Android. Steve Ballmer, on the other hand, believed that the iPhone did not attract business customers because it did not have a keyboard. He later regretted not focusing on phones much earlier.