Satya Nadella hints that the "ultimate mobile device" Surface Phone is in development

[midian182]

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has given the strongest hint to date that the long-rumored Surface phone is in development. Speaking during an interview with the Australian Financial Review, the CEO talked about his company redefining the field with the “ultimate mobile device.”

It looked as if Microsoft was finally abandoning the smartphone market back in May when it sold the feature phone business it acquired from Nokia to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile. A week later, the company announced plans to “streamline” its smartphone hardware business, which involved eliminating 1850 jobs and restructuring costs totaling $950 million.

But it appears this didn’t spell the end of Microsoft’s smartphone ambitions. Nadella said the company wasn’t interested in launching any technology that doesn’t introduce something new, and it would apply that mindset to smartphones.

"We don't want to be driven by just envy of what others have, the question is, what can we bring? That's where I look at any device form factor or any technology, even AI," he said. "We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device."

With Microsoft’s other Surface products – the Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, and the recent Surface Studio – proving popular, it’s not a great surprise to find the brand making its way to smartphones.

Almost a year ago, Microsoft executive vice president and chief marketing officer Chris Capossela said the company was working on a “breakthrough” smartphone that would make Apple fans "pause before they buy their 17th iPhone.”

With Windows Phones making up just 0.4 percent of the smartphone market in Q2 2016, the company knows this is one area where it really struggles. While a Surface Phone may not threaten Samsung and Apple’s domination, you would expect an “ultimate mobile device” to do well.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/67175-satya-nadella-hints-ultimate-mobile-device-surface-phone.html

 

[alabama man]

If it has windows it will flop. Isn't it enough they destroyed nokia with windows os for phones?

 

[Rippleman]

Disclaimer: I like windows phones.

This will fail like all the other windows phones if they do not get the ecosystem. It's time they bite the bullet and invest $ to get the top 100 apps of each store converted over. Loan out 100 MS app programmers FOR FREE to the top 100 app makers. Design side by side on-par apps with the developer for at least 5 years. Based on a salary of say $50,000 a year per programmer and then based on 5 year term (time it would take for public to start buying windows phones with any useable market share: 20-25%?) this would cost about $25 million. With such a huge market and such as small cost to get into, suprised they havent done this yet. From my perspective, if the app store where ON par with either android or IOS, based on the low price and high quality of windows phones, I don't see why anyone would buy anything BUT a windows phone that are 1/2 the price of competitors.

 

[Technosense]

I just don't understand why they don't do this right. The damage they've done to themselves the past few years is mind boggling.

It's very simple: WAIT until you can run x86 properly on a phone. It's only hardware that's really standing in the way. RT, this half assed attempt are pointless to all be a few fans.

In a few years, other companies will be doing this better and cheaper than MS and it will likely be added to the pile of dead projects they've murdered. This is coming from someone who would buy a true windows phone in a second and never look back at android if they can pull it off. I figure 2018 is the earliest we'll see legit working and stable anything from this...and it will be a game changer.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Who would trust nadella after he killed off the lumia 950 line, and WP in general? Who wants windows phone when all of MS's good apps are on android and iOS? Who wants a phone running a perpetual beta OS that has tons of glitches, power draining bugs, ece?

 

[Nero7]

It's very simple: WAIT until you can run x86 properly on a phone. It's only hardware that's really standing in the way. RT, this half assed attempt are pointless to all be a few fans.

Exactly. Looking forward to full Windows 10 on a mobile phone with full compatibility to desktop programs.

 

[Vic1248]

Microsoft's mobile venture is about showing capabilities and inspiring its OEM partners first and foremost, which, in turn, brings in business for flagship products, I.e. Windows 10 OS, Office 365, and Azure cloud platform as a one comprehensive ecosystem.

Also, while "Continuum" is a powerful feature for the Windows desktop experience through a smartphone, I believe Microsoft would opt for an x86/x64 Surface smartphone that is capable of running the full-fledged Windows 10 client OS to knock it out of the park. That would be the only viable and most powerful "productivity computing" smartphone ever existed.

 

[Bigtruckseries]

Self-activated fleshlight?

 

[captaincranky]

This a**hole Nadella is doing to M$, what Chip Kelly did "for" the Eagles. And that weren't pretty at all.

He's liable to find out it's not going to be very easy forcing Windows down the throat of mobile users, who already have at least two stable and established competing OS's to choose from. After all, he hasn't yet been able to ram Windows 10 down the throats of all the current Windows users he'd like to, and they really don't have another choice. He did start with what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly, in the operating systems for PC business.

Incidentally, Chip Kelly is out west now, running the San Francisco 49ers into the ground, at 1 win, 10 losses.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Disclaimer: I like windows phones.

This will fail like all the other windows phones if they do not get the ecosystem. It's time they bite the bullet and invest $ to get the top 100 apps of each store converted over. Loan out 100 MS app programmers FOR FREE to the top 100 app makers. Design side by side on-par apps with the developer for at least 5 years. Based on a salary of say $50,000 a year per programmer and then based on 5 year term (time it would take for public to start buying windows phones with any useable market share: 20-25%?) this would cost about $25 million. With such a huge market and such as small cost to get into, suprised they havent done this yet. From my perspective, if the app store where ON par with either android or IOS, based on the low price and high quality of windows phones, I don't see why anyone would buy anything BUT a windows phone that are 1/2 the price of competitors.

At $50K/yr, you are way underestimating the cost. Starting salary for a software engineer is in the low six figures, especially for a company like Microsoft.

Though I agree with the strategy.