Kill Windows Phone or risk dying, analyst tells Microsoft

At first glance, the Nokia acquisition made sense, said Thompson in an interview Friday. "The acquisition of Nokia is certainly not a black-and-white situation, but on the surface if you are committed to a devices and services strategy, which Microsoft says it is, it does makes some sense, even if they had Nokia under their thumb earlier," he said, referring to the 2011 agreement under which Nokia bet everything on Windows Phone. "There are efficiencies that accrue [with owning the hardware], as AppleApple has demonstrated. But the problem with the acquisition is that I disagree with the underlying strategy that drove [the Nokia purchase]." Alles zu Apple auf CIO.de

As Thompson saw it, Microsoft had a choice: It could either try to sell hardware -- the "devices" part of the strategy -- to a fraction of the potential market, or try to sell services to anyone and everyone with a connected device.

But Microsoft wanted all the cake. "Instead of choosing one or the other, Microsoft wants to do both," said Thompson.

And that's a bad move. Not simply because by doing all, Microsoft risks doing nothing well, but because its strengths clearly lie in the services side of the strategy.

"It's never been a hardware company," said Thompson. "I don't see any reason to expect that they now will become one. The danger is that the services that ought to be pushed, like Office 365Office 365, which could run on every platform, are going to die on the vine because of the emphasis on [Microsoft's own] devices." Alles zu Office 365 auf CIO.de