With No Presence at MWC 2016, Microsoft is Finally giving More Space to OEMs

After a long time Microsoft is taking a step back from what it had been doing since Nokia Acquisition. Making Phones, & More Phones. This is also the first time Microsoft will not have presence in Mobile World Congress, even though they had Lumia 650 in their hands that could have awaited a week for MWC announcement. Satya Nadella said a year back that we will see less phones, from Microsoft.

Microsoft wants OEMs to Make Phones

It’s 2016, Microsoft seems to be planning to follow the same strategy they followed in PC world. Give more space to OEMs, but keep raising the bar by building products like Surface. Lumia 950 XL & Continuum is classic example where Microsoft showcased that many things can be done with Windows 10 Mobile. Its time for OEMs to turn up now.

We in fact saw the first wave where 4 OEMs from different countries came out with their own devices namely,  VAIO Phone Biz,  Nuans NEO, Coship Moly X1 and Alcatel OneTouch Fierce XL. We need more of this, specially the bigger players like Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Honor, and so on. I am guessing that Microsoft will now start taking to OEM to build phones with their exit becoming so obvious. This might interest the phone makers with their biggest competition, Lumia, out of the way and to start with they might rebrand, and sell.

If this kicks in, It will bring trust among consumers because they will see more devices from other brands than just Microsoft itself. This is a very important factor which Microsoft knew, but with Nokia acquisition, it took a bit of time.

The Next Mobile Opportunity :

I am not working this to justify Windows 10 Mobile. It missed the opportunity that Android, and iOS leveraged, and now ruling the consumer market, but thats not the end of the day. Windows 10 Mobile is fundamentally Windows 10 at core, and the amount of code shared between the OS is huge. To what I know, its the same set of people developing, which brings down the resources to minimal.

We will not see everybody using Windows 10 Mobile running devices, but we will see Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 creating new features, like Continuum, become more business friendly, becoming more convergent. I still have confidence on what Satya Nadella is planning to do, but we will have to wait for it.