With Satya Nadella taking the helm at Microsoft last week to become only the third CEO of the company, CBR canvassed several analysts’ opinions over where the tech firm will go.
The cloud was a popular direction as Microsoft tries to reinvigorate innovation, even to the extent of giving founder Bill Gates a product role, and Creative Intellect UK’s Clive Howard predicted that the enterprise giant might drop devices.
An interesting topic that didn’t make the write-up, though, was what will happen to the Windows Phone OS? While Howard was happy to contend that Nadella might ditch the Surface tablet and even Nokia despite the $7.2bn take over of the Finnish firm, he thinks there’s still a place for Windows Phone – even if it’s not in the consumer space.
He told CBR: "Things are now more consumer-driven within the business with BYOD and so on, but businesses have traditionally been Microsoft customers.
"Moving away from BlackBerry, businesses see the Windows Phone as the natural fit for them. They still need Windows in various forms on various devices. I’ve spoken to organisations that have done just that, using Windows Phone for their employees, because they use Office 365."
Where that leaves Nokia handsets and patents was not addressed, with much of the manufacturing of devices running the OS being left to HTC and Samsung, to name two, but certainly the enterprise is where Microsoft has a chance of building an ecosystem through its cloud services.
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If it succeeds in doing so, that at least creates the possibility that Microsoft devices, be they tablets or smartphones, could find a welcoming new home.
