Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and cellular was a mistake

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is the third chief government of the software program big to confess the corporate has made some critical cellular errors. Satya Nadella took over from former CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014 and, simply over a yr later, wrote off $7.6 billion associated to Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nokia cellphone enterprise.

In an interview with Business Insider, Nadella admitted that Microsoft’s “exit” from the cell phone enterprise may have been dealt with higher. Asked a couple of strategic mistake or incorrect determination that he would possibly remorse, Nadella responds:

The determination I believe lots of people speak about – and probably the most troublesome choices I made after I grew to become CEO — was our exit of what I’ll name the cell phone as outlined then. In retrospect, I believe there may have been methods we may have made it work by maybe reinventing the class of computing between PCs, tablets, and telephones. 

Nadella is now the third Microsoft CEO to confess to the corporate’s cellular errors. Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates mentioned his “greatest mistake ever” was Microsoft shedding to Android. Google acquired Android in 2005 for $50 million, and former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in 2012 that Google’s preliminary focus was beating Microsoft’s early Windows Mobile efforts.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was additionally gradual to reply to Android and the iPhone menace, focusing the corporate’s efforts on Windows Mobile whereas famously laughing at the iPhone, calling it the “most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard.”

Ballmer admitted in 2013 that he regretted not specializing in the cellphone a lot earlier. “I regret there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows [Vista] that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,” defined Ballmer. “That is [the] thing I regret the most.”

Microsoft has been centered on apps for Android and iOS over the previous decade, although. The firm is continually updating its Phone Link app to hyperlink Android and even iPhone handsets to Windows, and Microsoft has a detailed relationship with Samsung to make sure its cellular Office apps are preinstalled on Samsung’s Android handsets.