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Microsoft The Almighty Buck Hardware

Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business (theverge.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the Microsoft,-Mobile,-Lay-Offs dept.
Microsoft is making more changes to its smartphone business. The company, which sold its feature phone business last week, on Wednesday announced that it is scaling back hardware -- laying off 1,850 staff and take a charge of $950 million including $200 million in severance payments in a memo to all employees. The company insists that "great new devices" are in the works. From Myerson's memo: Last week we announced the sale of our feature phone business. Today I want to share that we are taking the additional step of streamlining our smartphone hardware business, and we anticipate this will impact up to 1,850 jobs worldwide, up to 1,350 of which are in Finland. These changes are incredibly difficult because of the impact on good people who have contributed greatly to Microsoft. Speaking on behalf of Satya and the entire Senior Leadership Team, we are committed to help each individual impacted with our support, resources, and respect. For context, Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly active devices, our Surface and Xbox customer satisfaction is at record levels, and HoloLens enthusiasts are developing incredible new experiences. Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security, manageability, and Continuum, and with consumers who value the same. Thus, we need to be more focused in our phone hardware efforts.
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Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business More

Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business

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  • That explains alot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wkwilley2 ( 4278669 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:32AM (#52178333)

    Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security,..."

    Think I found your problem right there.

    • Re:That explains alot (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:41AM (#52178397) Journal

      Indeed... when the frig has *anyone* outside of Redmond admired a Windows-based OS for its --*snicker*-- security?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bondsbw ( 888959 )

        Actually, people who actually know something about security instead of only reading Slashdot commentary.

        People who realize that Vista, despite the inevitable hardships and bad reputation that came with breaking drivers and applications, was the result of a tough but vital decision to make some great improvements to security.

        People who understand that sandboxing is a powerful security model despite its limitations, one that is not just promoted by Microsoft but also by Apple and even Google to a degree (e.g.

        • Re:That explains alot (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sir_Eptishous ( 873977 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:12AM (#52178621)

          People who realize that Vista, despite the inevitable hardships and bad reputation that came with breaking drivers and applications, was the result of a tough but vital decision to make some great improvements to security.

          Right, and when did Vista come out? Waaaayyyy too late to put the Genie back in the lamp(or horse in the barn).
          Oh, and the chest thumping security techniques that MS likes to brag about post Vista were things that were the norm in most other OS'.
          So essentially MS was shamed into even taking security seriously, actually.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by bondsbw ( 888959 )

            Late or not, shamed or not, it doesn't matter now. Security is much better thanks to those decisions and efforts, so the idea that Windows is a joke of security is one that nobody that understands security has taken seriously for quite some time now.

        • That's cute, and yes Microsoft isn't as bad at it as it once was, but the point still stands: When it comes to security, Microsoft Windows is dead-last on the list of OSes that come to mind.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by wicka_wicka ( 679279 )
          Slashdot's moderation is hilariously and unsurprisingly broken. Any defense of Microsoft gets flagged as trolling or flamebait, even when it's just a list of true facts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Well, considering the fact that a large number of function calls to the OS weren't implemented it was hard to develop anything advanced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c ( 8461 )

      Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security,..."

      Think I found your problem right there.

      Exactly. In a nutshell, they're fighting Blackberry for customers.

  • Little Wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:40AM (#52178379) Journal

    Are they even growing at this point? I mean, their marketshare isn't much above statistical noise, and even buying Nokia didn't help them much thanks to their demand to re-form it into their vision instantly instead of trying to ship Nokia into shape and introduce their vision slowly into it.

    I get their drive to unify mobile+gaming+PC+whatever into one big fat ecosystem, but let's face it - they got into the mobile market way too late, and what moves they did make were either not capitalized on properly (Sidekick), flopped hard (Pink/Kin), or was way too-little/too-late (Nokia).

    Maybe it's time for them to instead go back to their roots? It may be too late to un-suck the Windows UI, but at least they can make moves to un-NSA the damned thing and to stop treating their customers like easily-abused chattel... ...nah. Maybe it's better to just let them die. Wish Linux had a wider market, though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They should nuke everything related to Windows 8, 8.1, and 10, and C#.

      Then go back to Windows 7 and integrate all the patches and hotfixes.

      Then sell it as Windows 7+ edition.

      I would pay for that.

  • The severance package is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:40AM (#52178383)
    ...free upgrades to Windows 10 on all your Windows devices!

  • If they streamline it enough... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VAXcat ( 674775 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:41AM (#52178385)
    ...maybe they will stop trying to make the Windows Desktop work like a Windows phone...

    • ...maybe they will stop trying to make the Windows Desktop work like a Windows phone...

      ...I found a Windows user! We need an angry mob with torches, pitchforks, a barrel of tar and some feathers over here! PRONTO!!!

  • "Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly a (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:42AM (#52178401)

    So what you're saying, is that it's the most effective virus ever written?

    I've now had to reformat about a dozen different systems in the past two weeks because of botched "upgrades". In some cases, the systems didn't roll back properly (why am I being presented with the EULA only after it upgrades?). In other cases the systems were rendered unbootable due to driver issues. I've seen maybe three or four successful upgrades, and even those had to be rolled back because it nuked the ability to use the peripherals attached to the computer.

    All this stuff kinda reminds me of the early 2000s where you could get a virus just by plugging an unfirewalled Windows XP system straight into the internet. Within minutes, you'd have something nasty on your computer and critical processes would be crashing left right and center.

    Windows 10 seems an awful lot like that. Plug your computer into the internet, wait a while, and suddenly you're infected. Good luck restoring your computer to the former state 100% (without prior system images or other full backups).

    • Even if the upgrades were all 100% successful and all of the hardware had proper drivers, it's still an asshole move on Microsoft's part, just to be able to say "Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly active devices" to the press.

      • Re:"Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthl (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rob Y. ( 110975 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:53AM (#52178963)

        To be fair-ish, the reason for this was to be able to say "windows 10 recently crossed 300 million" to *developers* - who've abandoned Microsoft's roadmap en masse. And they did that largely because Microsoft's roadmap was "throw out your existing WIN32 code and rewrite it for our great new mobile/desktop/xbox platform that nobody uses yet". About 4 years after those same dev's started rewriting their existing WIN32 code the for iOS/Android/web platforms that everybody uses. Now they've bought Xamarin, in an attempt to allow devs to target iOS and Android like they want - and get Windows support 'for free'. Except, again, they're counting on those devs to do yet another rewrite to get support for that platform that nobody uses. There are some real benefits to being able to target iOS and Android from a single code base (to whatever limited extent Xamarin actually enables that), but is that worth starting over?

        • And they thought it was a good idea to not release the Metro userland for Windows 7! I think that's the original sin, Metro software could have run in floating windows back in 2012 on the OS people actually use. Breaking forward compatibility, and so early to boot was a dickish move.

          In former times, .NET 1.1 and 2.0 were available for win 9x, even DX9 and other things. Windows 3.1 had win32s though it mostly served to run Freecell.
          No Metro apps on Windows 7 means no user base, so nothing to draw the develo

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

            That's less of a problem than not having supported WIN32 code on Windows RT. They're able to seed Metro into the marketplace by giving away free Windows 10 upgrades - but they can't actually get people to rewrite WIN32 code for Metro when the whole world's moving to either web-based apps or iOS/Android. But if WIN32 code could've been easily ported to Metro, then they'd have stood a chance. They're now trying to make it easy to port Metro stuff to iOS/Android, but there's no Metro stuff to port. If they

          • > And they thought it was a good idea to not release the Metro userland for Windows 7!
            > I think that's the original sin, Metro software could have run in floating windows back in
            > 2012 on the OS people actually use. Breaking forward compatibility, and so
            > early to boot was a dickish move.

            If they had released Windows 7 with the Metro/tiles abortion, people would've been compaining about Windows 7 and hanging on to Windows XP. Instead, people ended up compaining about the Metro/tiles abortion in W

            • To be clear I wasn't suggesting them releasing Metro tiles with Windows 7 (2009), but rather backporting the stuff to Windows 7 when they released 8 (2012). That of course would have required that Windows 8 doesn't force Metro tiles on their users, e.g. allowing a start menu.

    • All this stuff kinda reminds me of the early 2000s where you could get a virus just by plugging an unfirewalled Windows XP system straight into the internet. Within minutes, you'd have something nasty on your computer and critical processes would be crashing left right and center.

      This is true, its was around 2002/2003. In order to not get XP infested after first boot while being hooked up to the internet you had to have a software firewall and windows updates already downloaded, then install them before you connect the XP box to the internet.

  • To my friends and colleagues being affected, best of luck, folks. Hope you have a soft landing someplace.

    (No, don't work for MSFT. I do work with a lot of the folks there.)

  • this wall:
    http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm... [idc.com]
    should have left many year ago.

  • I think they're long past (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:49AM (#52178455)
    The streamlining phase.

  • Hey, it was a business!! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I don't think slashdotters understood the really big news here: for Microsoft IT WAS REALLY A BUSINESS, not a bad joke! :-D

  • Found the typo (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:50AM (#52178461)

    It took awhile, but I finally caught the typo. It says their success was "limited to", but what they meant was "limited by". The sentence makes sense after you swap in the correct word.

    • It makes sense the other way, too. Only a handful of companies with morons for CEOs, CTOs, COOs, and CFOs thought it was a good idea

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crgrace ( 220738 )

      They also have to include (at least in the US) things like MS' share of COBRA payments until the people laid off get new jobs.

      Since most of the job losses are in Finland, I expect the high cost is due to Finnish employment regulations.

  • MSFT's smartphone business strategy: FAIL (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:53AM (#52178485)
    How long before Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy sees a similar fate because it has angered so many Microsoft customers?

    • How long before Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy sees a similar fate because it has angered so many Microsoft customers?

      Not. Soon. Enough.

    • Very insightful. I agree and would mod you up if I had the points today.

  • Lay off the smartphone business and streamline the 1850. Cheaper and more efficient. You could even use those 1850 to turn your OS back into something people would want to use on a desktop. Desktop. Remember? Where you once stormed the market and ruled. Where you still rule to some degree but might not much longer if you keep bumbling like a drunk in the dark.

    MS, I usually sell good advice, this one's free: Concentrate on what you're good at. Desktop OS. Gaming consoles. Office applications. Hardware. Even

    • The "desktop" is dead. The new model is the "cloud hybrid" of ChromeOS, Android and iOS. This is just an extension of the client/server market found in enterprise, but now available to just about everyone, where Google, Microsoft (O365) and iOS all converge in concept. The difference is, Google is lightyears ahead of Microsoft in this new hybrid, and offers most people everything they need in an "office suite", and does so way better than anything the other two do.

      I have to use O365 and Google Apps. And hav

      • And having used both, Google is much better suited for your average user than Microsoft, which seems to think you should need a MIS degree to use O365; Making it harder to use, for no apparent reason.

        I went through an O365/Exchange Online migration, which was a bitch to say the least.
        I also continue to support them, and I can say unequivocally, that O365 takes more hand holding, more troubleshooting, and causes more hassles for me, as an admin than when we were using Office 2013 and Exchange onPrem.

        However, with all that being said, from the users perspective it wasn't much of a change, and no, you don't need an MIS degree to use it.
        Outlook, Excel, Word, etc?

      • The desktop is dead? Wow, could've fooled me. How many people do you know what "do this cloud thing"? I am dead serious, does ANYONE use that shit as a private user? I'm not talking about company use, I'm not talking about people running some kind of message or image board, I'm talking about Joe Sixpack sitting at home doing his shit.

        Unless that is done somehow fully transparent to Joe, he won't even know about it.

        • The joe Six Pack uses what he has!
          I know one who has Windows XP and no Internet, so he uses that. Music and crap in the file manager, stuff mostly opens in VLC or whatever is associated.
          Others are with Windows 7, some stream everything, one streams a lot but has a sneakernet collection from just before.
          Kids these days have a mobile device without a DPAD and never use a file manager, because that's what given to them. They don't know that real keyboards have a couple keys always in the same place that brings

  • 300 million devices.. explored: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    20 million xbox ones sold (roughly). counting xbox one as a windows 10 unit is ridiculous, but we'll count them anyway since they do.

    50 million pc sold globally last 12 months (very rough, very loosely based on actual figure of 68m sold in 2015)

    the number of mobile devices is so insignificant, not even going to count them.

    leaves 229,999,997 computers forcibly upgraded to windows 10 or tricked into it by malware-like misleading popups and alerts

    and finally, those 3 people who voluntarily upgraded to windows

  • Microsoft has a Smartphone business?

    Never heard of it. Which does it run... iOS or Android?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • That should be evident since SJ started the ball rolling in Jan 2007.

    Apple, too, must face the same issue.

  • Just go all the way and hang-up the phone business. It appears that Microsoft apps work better on Android phones than Windows phones and they are making lots of money on the Android OS, so just do the best thing.
  • Seemed like a good idea at the time now I'm stuck with it for ages. Oh well, live and learn.

    • My Lumia 635 was only $39. You should have tried something cheaper for awhile before committing.

      • Shoulda, coulda, woulda lol
      • Earlier today I bought an LG K8 running Android 6 at US Cellular for $30. It's not a contract deal either. It's prepaid. So, there are plenty of good phones with evolved mobile OS's available, that cost about what you paid for your Lumia 635.

        • I definitely agree. I am not using the Lumia as my phone right now. I got a Moto E for $39 with the same carrier (Virgin Mobile). And the Moto E has now dropped to $29. It's a heck of a phone for thirty bucks.

  • >> Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business

    It still has one?

  • Microsoft HAS a smartphone business????

  • Still absolutely fascinated to see where they take their smartphone business. I don't think they see themselves as a company that can stay relevant in the consumer space without a competitive mobile platform, particularly when that's arguably the most important piece of any connected ecosystem. The fact that these are mostly former Nokia jobs lends credence to the idea of an in-house "Surface Phone" being their next move.

  • Love the quote at the end (Score:3)

    by chr1st1anSoldier ( 2598085 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @12:28PM (#52179885)
    The end of the article:

    "And as long as it has taken the company, Microsoft has still arguably achieved something that its competitors have not... It took more than two decades to get there, but Microsoft still somehow got there first."

    Translation: We don't know what we did, bet we did it first.

    On another note, such a shame. I still wish they would dump that secure boot crap and let the hobbyist/modding community go to town like they did on WP7. IMHO I think that would do more to attract developers than trying to wave their unified development platform around. Take down the walled garden and let the hobbyist and modders go to town customizing and hacking roms once again.

  • They tried and failed badly to create a smart phone business and therefore could not stop Android from growing into a powerful platform. With Android apps being able to run on the inexpensive laptop devices known as Chromebooks... Well let's just say the phrase, "Houston, we have a problem" is an understatement for Microsoft.

    With less than 10% market share I was always wondering why they even got any press time with Windows Phone and now with under 1% one has to wonder how many millions do they want to be

  • What smartphone business? From May 23, 2016: Windows Phone Market Share Sinks Below 1 Percent [slashdot.org]

    • Sure, even though they're now officially a rounding error in the market share stats as noted in the 5/23 article. The phones actually aren't bad; my old Nokia (from before they shed the name) Lumina 635 works fine, and the buttons are much easier to use with my arthritic fingers than most of the Androids and Apples. Also, MS seems to have had better luck over the years than others with getting the carriers to allow updates; perhaps not having so many of them helps? I do think that I like having a phone that

  • Where did Status Nadella come from. Now it's the time for a "our platform is on fire" memo and Microsoft being acquired at sale price by that former employer.

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