Nadella confirms Microsoft isn't stepping away from Windows phones

Many Microsoft fans wonder what the future holds for Windows phones. Satya Nadella recently offered an answer to that question, but without giving too many details. At the annual shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington, Nadella confirmed once again that Microsoft isn’t stepping away from supporting Windows phones.

Actually, this is an old line. Microsoft keeps on repeating it from time to time, trying to reassure fans that everything is going according to plan. However, we all know that the popularity of Windows phones is dropping by the day.

Of course, this causes much worry among Microsoft’s shareholders. Actually, one shareholder bluntly asked Nadella was his vision on Windows phone was. You can read his answer below.

Microsoft won’t give up on Windows phones

In other words, we think about the mobility of the human being across all of the devices, not just the mobility of a single device. That said we are not stepping away or back from our focus on our mobile devices.

What we are going to do is focus that effort on places where we have differentiation. If you take Windows Phone, where we are differentiated in Windows phone is it’s manageability, it’s security, it’s continuing capability that is the ability to have a phone that in fact can even act like a PC. So, we are going to double down on those points of differentiation. In fact, the HP X3, which came out recently, is perhaps a great example of a differentiated device built using the Windows phone platform and that sort of points for the direction. We will keep looking at different forms, different functions that we can bring to mobile devices, while also supporting our software across a variety of devices. So, that’s the approach you will see us take.

We are not stepping away from supporting our Windows phone users. But at the same time, we are recognizing that there are other platforms in mobile that have higher share and we want to make sure that our software is available on that.

Will this strategy be successful?

Only time will tell if Microsoft’s differentiation-based strategy will work in the long term. For the time being, this strategy isn’t working very well. The HP Elite X3 is only on the 19th place in the top of the most popular Windows 10 Mobile phones. Of course, this device has the potential of becoming more popular. Nevertheless, taking into account the publicity it benefited from, it’s fair to say everybody expected the HP X3 to be more popular than it is.

What do you think about Nadella’s statement? Do you think this differentiation-based approach will be successful? Would you adopt a different strategy if you were in Microsoft’s CEO’s place?

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