Microsoft: no plans to make own phones
Happy with Nokia and co.
Microsoft has categorically denied it plans to enter the smartphone hardware business. It remains satisfied, it insisted, with its current manufacturing partners.
Following the announcement of Microsoft Surface, the company's own-brand entry into the tablet market, speculation has been rife that it make the obvious next step and release its own smartphone too.
When asked about such a move, though, the firm insisted there were no plans for a Microsoft smartphone whatsoever, Information Week reports.
"We have a strong ecosystem of partners that we are very satisfied with," said Greg Sullivan, head of Windows Phone marketing.
HTC, Nokia and Samsung are all said to be prepping Windows Phone 8 devices.
Dell's Windows 8 tablet plans leaked last month, but maybe they weren't enough to keep Microsoft's satisfaction levels high.
With faith lost in HTC's ability to sell slates, Redmond decided to take matters into its own hands. A process it obviously feels unnecessary in the smartphone domain. ®
COMMENTS
I doubt Nokia has any long term plans
Given that Microsoft with their announcement of no meaningful upgrades to current phones, have guaranteed that they Nokia will sell very few phones between now and the launch (if it happens) of the Windows8 phones, I can't help but wonder if there will be any Nokia to build phones for them soon.
Re: Nokia
> I do like the idea of a unified UI across all devices.
Whereas I like the idea of using a different UI depending upon whether I'm using a mouse and keyboard, my fingers, or a joypad.
They may not have to...
Perhaps this is MS simply playing with words. I simply can't believe that they have no designs on Nokia, having (a) got a former employee in at the top (who promptly defenestrated N's own phone OSes and switched to an unfinished MS product before N had suitable devices ready), and (b) effectively made N's first Windows Phones obsolete with the announcement of WP8. Even if you don't believe in the sabotage theory (intentional or not), you have to admit that appearances doesn't exactly discourage the suspicion.
Moreover, even if MS doesn't buy outright what will remain of Nokia within a year or two, perhaps they could still take a controlling interest whilst still leaving N an outward shell of a company - thus leaving MS able to claim that "they aren't making their own phones" and being letter-of-the-law correct.
Whatever mistakes and mis-steps Nokia made in the past, it's sad to see a once-great company reduced to a tottering shell, with the vultures watching for it to take its final fall.
Re: Nokia
Apple never dumped their preferred high performance programming framework in favour of something that won't run on their older devices.
Microsoft has done just that - XNA has failed and is now dead, with C/C++ the preferred option for high performance on WP8 but C/C++ isn't allowed to run on WP7.x devices. All those games companies will jump at the chance of ignoring the shit that is XNA and instead port their game engines to WP8 using C/C++, leaving WP7.x owners with even fewer options. Expect to see C/C++ used to overcome other failings in Silverlight, and the process of obsolescence for WP7.x will be complete.
This is pretty much a complete platform break for Windows Phone - if you think developers are going to continue supporting two completely different operating systems in order to target the handful of WP7.x owners you're bonkers.
