> One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone.
They had no other choice.
The technical foundation of the prior WP versions (aka, Windows CE) was just too dated and they didn't have a Windows kernel / userland capable of performantly dealing on ARM, x86 performance was and still is utter dogshit on battery powered devices, they didn't have a Windows userland actually usable on anything touch based, and most importantly they did not have developer tooling even close to usable.
At the same time, Apple had a stranglehold over the upper price class devices, Android ate up the low and mid range class - and unlike the old Ballmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" days, Microsoft didn't have tooling that enticed developers, while Apple had Xcode with emulators that people had been used to for years, and Android had a fully functioning Eclipse based toolchain.
As I recall, that is not correct. There was a gargantuan internal effort to refactor Windows 10 to run on everything from mobile devices to servers. Windows Phone 10 was running Windows 10. And the tile UI was well received by those who had WP devices.
As others have said, lack of critical apps and shenanigans from Google is what killed sales which led to the death of Windows Phone.
It really doesn't help when Google repeatedly broke Gsuite and the YouTube apps and mandated their removal from Windows phones.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/aug/15/...
This is the kind of shit regulators should stop. In the 90's, this would have gotten Microsoft broken up into several companies.
Apple darn well knew what people want - even the first iPhone, the one that didn't even have an App Store (which got invented as a concept by jailbreakers proving it was possible!), came with YouTube and Maps from the start.
What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
> What I don't know however why Microsoft insisted on the ability to not show ads and download videos when copying that concept. They had to know that they were directly cutting into Google's bottom line.
There's a long backstory here.
Microsoft tried everything to get YouTube on Windows Phone. At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app. That didn't happen.
Microsoft tried to use the proper APIs, but Google kept shutting them off:
https://www.windowscentral.com/youtube-access-and-windows-ph...
"Downloading" the videos was Microsoft trying to work around API limitations and shut offs.
Imagine Microsoft's customers getting angrier and angrier that YouTube kept breaking. For years. This was a deal breaker for lots of people, especially young early adopters.
Microsoft tried really hard here.
What Google did was abuse their market position to cripple Windows Phone. Customers abandoned Windows Phone because it didn't have YouTube.
Google had to play nice with Apple in the early days because Apple had all the patents Google needed to continue with Android. It wasn't until they purchased Motorolla that they had a MAD patent strategy.
> At one point, they negotiated with Google and Google said they were going to work on an app.
MS made that offer to probably every developer on top 100 on ios/android stores. That usually meant some small shop in Eastern Europe will be contracted.