[toast0]

> Ballmer’s purchase of Nokia was a tremendous waste of money, it’s taken a lot of effort under Nadella to right the ship.

Was it the purchase that was the waste, or the subsequent management that wasted the potential?

Anyway, bringing Intel back into the picture; things would be a lot different if Intel hadn't canceled x86 phone chips around the same time Microsoft was hyping Continuum, the converged phone/desktop feature of Windows Mobile 10. If that was launched on x86 phones with win32 apps, it would have been really interesting. And, if they had that ready to go, maybe there would have been internal excitememt about WM10 and it wouldn't have been such a poor showing. Then again, maybe ending their massive QA program wasn't great for quality, either. I still miss windows phone, but there's no going back.