NEW YORK: This is the same Microsoft that spent almost a half-decade trying to offer a credible alternative to Apple’s iPhone and mobile devices running Google’s Android. And it’s the same Microsoft that paid more than $7 billion to buy Nokia’s once-mighty handset business, only to see its mobile business sink further. The company now clings precariously to a 3 percent share of new smartphone sales.
Make no mistake; Microsoft still wants its mobile operating system, Windows, to be the software in our smartphones. But mobile developers continue to focus on making apps for Apple or Android devices instead; making Windows phones an increasingly hard sell.
That reality has finally sunk in at Microsoft, and a new strategy is afoot. When Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the top job at the company about a year ago, he signalled that the company’s priorities were shifting. Microsoft, he said, was in a “mobile-first, cloud-first world.”
