The company can’t compete with the two biggest OS’ in town
Microsoft is officially throwing in the towel – the company has announced mass layoffs in its hardware division that includes around 7,800 employees in its phone business. The layoffs are in line with the company’s “fundamental restructuring”, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft is apparently moving away from “a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family.”
Microsoft is now looking to restructure its phone business, and is moving away from competing with iOS and Android in the mass market, and are now refocusing on three major customer categories: the value segment (read: entry level), high-end market (flagship phones) and surprisingly, business customers. From the wording of Nadella’s memo – “we’ll bring business customers the best management, security and productivity experiences they need” – it looks like Microsoft is looking to compete with BlackBerry in providing businesses – secure, productivity-minded smartphones, but obviously this is just speculation on our part.
