If you're reading this, you're probably aware that Microsoft has "retrenched" in the mobile hardware space, laying off thousands of engineers it acquired when it purchased Nokia back in 2014.
With Windows 10 Mobile shifted to a "feature2" development branch, away from the main Redstone 3 branch, you'd be forgiven for wondering whether Windows has a future on phones at all. Well, Satya Nadella thinks it will.
In an interview with Marketplace.org (via MSPU), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterated the company's strategy for future phone hardware.
"We make phones today, we have OEMs like HP making phones and others and we picked a very specific area to focus on which is management, security, and this one particular feature that we have called Continuum, which is a phone that can even be a desktop.""We're making sure that all of our software is available on iOS and Android and it's first class, and we're looking for what's the next change in form and function. What we've done with Surface is a good example. No one before us thought of 2-in-1s, and we created that category and made it a successful category to the point where there are more 2-in-1s coming. And that's what we want to do. So when you say we'll make more phones, I'm sure we'll make more phones, but they will not look like phones that are there today."
It's widely expected that Microsoft will leverage the Surface brand in any future phone device, as hinted at by Nadella's above comments. Any future phone from Microsoft has to be disruptive to be noticed, in a world where Redmond has thoroughly earned its reputation for a barren app store.
Windows 10 S, revealed alongside yesterday's Surface Laptop joins Xamarin, Project Centennial and various other initiatives Microsoft are deploying to drive interest both from developers and consumers in the Windows 10 Store, which will be crucial if and when Microsoft decides to re-enter the phone market.
