Microsoft eats another $1B as phone strategy shrinks to enterprise-only
Microsoft's announcement yesterday that it would eat nearly $1 billion and lay off another 1,850 workers, three-quarters of them from its phone division, prompted analysts to call the company's consumer smartphone business dead, deceased, departed.
They agreed that Microsoft's only remaining shot at phones is the enterprise, probably with a "Surface"-branded model that apes the Surface Pro as a design benchmark that struts Windows' capabilities.
"They've discarded consumer," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in an interview. "They just tossed out the Windows fan. It's now all about business."
Moorhead and others based their opinions on statements made in mid-2015 by CEO Satya Nadella, who spelled out three markets for Microsoft's smartphones after he announced a retrenchment and a massive $7.6 billion write-off for the failed acquisition of Nokia under his predecessor, Steve Ballmer.
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