Ask HN: Why didn't Microsoft truly compete when it comes to phones?

[banjomet]

My hypothesis is that they were afraid of an antitrust lawsuit. If they had chosen to compete, Microsoft would have been broken up. I really liked the idea of Continuum[0] and I know that Microsoft makes $5-$15 per Android phone[1] but I think they still should have competed.

[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum [1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/

[thesuperbigfrog]

1) Poor Timing: They shipped third in a crowded and competitive market where Android and Apple were already established players.

2) Insufficient Apps: they did not get enough developers creating applications for the Windows Phone ecosystem to have a compelling enough platform that was self-sustaining. They even started to build "app bridges" to make it easy to port Android and Apple apps to Windows Phone, but ultimately gave up after a few years of trying with little to show for it.

[mister_hn]

I'm not convinced that it was because of poor timing, but just because of bad App environment. Look what's doing Huawei lately: kicked out of Google Services, it's a well established Phone maker, but it's losing quotas really fast, because their alternative OS (still a fork of Android) doesn't offer important applications to date (e.g. WhatsApp, Banking Apps, Payment Apps and so on), so I believe Microsoft was just crushed because developers weren't attracted by the platform a the buyers weren't interested.

The phones actually were pretty good. The Lumia 920 was really amazing.

[the_hoser]

The poor App ecosystem was a direct result of poor timing. There isn't anything they could have done differently in mid 2010 to improve on that.

[ianceicys]

Core vs Context. Phones\Mobile wasn't see as a core area for multiple business units. Mobile\Phone was seen as context at Microsoft until it was too late.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140817131527-27177208-core-...

[the_hoser]

Timing. They waited too long to enter the market, and with two well-established platforms, there just wasn't room for a third, no matter how good it was.