In the mid 2010s, Microsoft developed a surprisingly good OS for its smartphones: fast, intuitive, beautifully-designed and even-gasp!—minimalistic. One commentator—I forget who—smartly suggested that Microsoft should call it WIN and put it on tablets and laptops too. A breath of fresh air, daylong battery life, a UX that gets out the way, and perfectly-timed to capitalize on the fundamental uselessness of iPadOS for real work and the fundamental hinkiness of Android on larger displays. Instead, Microsoft killed it when its partners' smartphones weren't immediately competitive. A mistake, Satya Nadella now admits.
Is there any kind of real strategic mistake or just wrong decision that you regret in retrospect? The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO —was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones.
Fantastic how he describes what pundits were screaming at them to do years ago, like he just woke up at 4 am realizing it on Sunday.
