Windows Phone

Microsoft's third-place mobile OS with a genuinely great UI, a $7.2B Nokia acquisition, and zero chance against iOS and Android.

† 2010 – 2020No PMF Died in 2020

Born

2010

Died

2020

Lifespan

10 years

Cause of Death

No PMF

What Happened

Windows Phone launched in October 2010 as Microsoft's clean-slate answer to iPhone and Android after Windows Mobile's embarrassing decline. Its Metro design language — flat, typographic, tile-based — was genuinely original, years ahead of iOS's eventual flat redesign.

Microsoft paid $7.2B for Nokia's devices business in 2014 to guarantee its phone future. In 2015, Satya Nadella wrote off $7.6B on that acquisition, laid off 7,800 people, and effectively ended Microsoft's ambition to be a first-party phone maker.

The core problem was the app gap. Developers prioritized iOS and Android. Without apps, users wouldn't switch. Without users, developers wouldn't come. Every yearly update added capability, but Windows Phone never broke through a roughly 3-4% global market share ceiling.

In October 2017, Joe Belfiore publicly tweeted that Microsoft was done adding features and pushing users to the platform. In January 2020, Windows 10 Mobile reached end of support. A decade-long push to break the iOS/Android duopoly ended with Microsoft pre-installing its apps on Android phones instead.

“We're moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family.”

— Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, July 8, 2015 (announcing the $7.6B Nokia writedown)

Last Words — Official Shutdown Notice

“Of course we'll continue to support the platform — bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features and hardware aren't the focus. I've tried hard to incent app devs. Paid money. Written apps for them. But the volume of users is too low for most companies to invest.”