Microsoft's Windows Phone has difficulties in the mobile market where Google's Android and Apple's iOS are conquering.
The company's struggles are no secret, but for a time, Microsoft had tried to keep Windows Mobile as a growing concern. Through 2016, Microsoft produced new builds for the Windows Insider program and added new features to Windows Mobile. Then around the time of release of the Windows 10 Creators Update in April 2017, that development largely ground to a halt.
Windows Mobile already lacked certain features that were delivered to Windows on the PC, a platform where Microsoft still excels.
With the company gradually changing its focus from Windows Phone to VR and Surface lineup, Microsoft is no longer developing new features or new hardware for mobile operating system. Existing supported phones will receive bug fixes and security updates as the platform is switching into maintenance mode.
So after a long awaited time, Windows Phone is dead, as Microsoft's executive confessed on Twitter:
Of course we'll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren't the focus. https://t.co/0CH9TZdIFu
— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 8, 2017
The problem for Microsoft is that Windows Phone lack the exposure it needed. With the fact that Android and iOS are, and were, everywhere. Windows Phone that had some interesting ideas, never quite caught on.
To be exact, Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform has been dead for more than a year, but the company has never officially admitted it before.
We have tried VERY HARD to incent app devs. Paid money.. wrote apps 4 them.. but volume of users is too low for most companies to invest. https://t.co/ePsySxR3LB
— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 8, 2017
Among many reasons that the sales of Windows Phone weren't as expected is that Microsoft never got over the app incentive hurdle because it has a very low user volume to justify the investment from app developers.
In 2016, Windows Mobile devices collapsed. Two to three years before that, annual sales of Windows Phones were around tens of millions; but in 2017, they're close to zero.
The company was also too slow to acknowledge the importance of capacitive screens and finger-first user interfaces. Instead of seeing the iPhone and immediately starting development on Windows Phone to compete with it, the company first tried to graft some basic finger-friendly interface features to the (old) Windows Mobile - a mobile operating system that fundamentally stylus-oriented.
It was in 2010 when Windows Phone 7 hit the market that Microsoft started to focus on quality and finger-based user interface, and build an operating system around that interface. But if compared to Android and iOS, the features were poor.
Windows Phone 7 devices also weren't officially upgradeable to Windows Phone 8.
Then when Windows 10 Mobile was released, Microsoft said that Windows Phone 8.1 won't not get any system updates, neither features nor security updates, unless user upgrades to the newer OS.