Windows 10 Mobile: pronounced dead by tweet on a Sunday night
Microsoft confirmed no new features or hardware for Windows phones
The market's verdict: +2.2% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
On October 8, 2017, Joe Belfiore, the executive who had personified Windows Phone, tweeted that Microsoft would of course keep supporting the platform with bug fixes and security updates, but that building new features and hardware was not the focus. He added that he had personally switched to Android for the apps, which is the phone equivalent of your surgeon recommending another hospital. The writing had been on the wall since the phone business write-down of 2015. Support for Windows 10 Mobile itself ended on December 10, 2019, with one final security update in January 2020. Windows Phone fans got a decade of loyalty tests and, in the end, a referral letter.
This one is officially acknowledged.
They did it more than once
First the handsets, then the whole platform. Windows Phone fans attended two funerals.
Links
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Context
- Wikipedia (wikipedia)
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Acknowledgement
- Microsoft Learn (official)
↳ caused by Belfiore "no new features" tweets (October 2017)
Timeline
- Oct 8, 2017 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.