July 01, 2015
The mobile market sometimes tends to come up with the weirdest of rumors. The latest buzz that has gotten the industry all agog is that Microsoft is planning to do away completely with its Windows Phone and is instead, planning to adopt the Android ecosystem. The rumor further states that Redmond will offer devices powered by Google Play, containing Microsoft’s own apps. In return, hearsay states, Google will be offering the giant versions of YouTube, Google Maps and Search; all designed exclusively for Windows.
Rumors online seem to suggest that CEO Satya Nadella and his senior management team are considering doing away with Windows Phone on the company’s select smartphones and smaller tablets. They further indicate that the giant will bundle Android pre-loaded with its own apps and services; and that it has already signed deals with Dell and Samsung to load its apps onto the selected smartphones and tablets.
Actual Source of the Rumor
There may be a good reason for this rumor to suddenly start circulating in this manner. During its Build Conference earlier this year, Microsoft announced Project Astoria, which enables app developers to easily port and even reuse Android code to create applications for the Windows ecosystem. Though the company had displayed only a glimpse of this build, developers knew that the build 10149 update package had hidden an entire Android subsystem within itself.
100MB out of the approximately 300MB main OS package had been given to “projecta”.
This contains some DLLs; the general framework of Android-on-Windows apps; an Android file system including some tools and debuggers as well. This Android subsystem resides under System32 and comes with an OpenGLES translator.
The above, plus Satya Nadella’s plan to reduce overall device costs, were probably the actual source of the rumor.
Microsoft Rectifying Past Errors
The fact remains that Microsoft is in some amount of trouble and is planning to rectify certain faulty decisions and choices of the past. It has agreed to sell part of Bing to Uber and may be shortly closing its Web display advertising business, giving it away to AOL and AppNexus.
In addition to the above, the giant’s acquisition of Nokia Devices and Services is not working out as planned. Sources fear that it may hence become the source of a possible write off for the company. Add to all this, Microsoft itself realizes that its phone sales figures are dismally falling and that it is not being able to do as well in the market as expected. Satya Nadella recently stated that the most sensible solution to the problem would be to reduce the cost across devices.
The giant had, in the past, written off $6.2 billion, following the failure to make adequate profits post its acquisition of aQuantive. It seems like it will have to go through yet another multi-billion write off in the next few months. The advantage of writing off a part or the whole of the $10 billion deal is that it will enable Microsoft to start afresh in the hardware business. Though it would lead to a temporary setback in image for the company, it could ultimately do it some amount of good as well, in the long run.
Windows 10 to Arrive Soon
The giant is now all set to introduce its very impressive, completely revamped, new OS, Windows 10. This platform, which is scheduled to arrive during Fall this year, is expected to change the entire look and feel of Windows across multiple platforms; both desktop and mobile; thereby positively impacting individual users as well as the enterprise sector as a whole.
At such a time, the above rumor does not seem to hold water. It is most likely that the company would be investing all its energies on promoting and propagating the use of its all-new platform first and then contemplate its next course of action.
It would be interesting to see what future decisions Microsoft would take, in order to salvage its own standing in the market. In any case, we strongly suggest that you take the rumor with sacks of salt – at the moment, it hardly seems as if the giant would be doing much else, apart from focusing on introducing its upcoming OS, Windows 10.
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