Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

Nokia has already stated that the Nokia Android phone (Normandy) was cancelled, even before the Microsoft take over.

If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot.

Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it. Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't.

Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7, which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best.

This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion.

Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.

Not at all.

Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past successes with a new, more modern mobile OS.

At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.

I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.