I forsee much more "market focusing" for poor Mr. Satya Nadella. He's going to be cleaning up more crap left for him by Ballmer than Bush left for Obama. Anyone that thought getting in bed with Nokia was a good idea needs their head examined.
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Microsoft to Lay Off 7,800 Employees 'Primarily' in its Phone Business
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Did you just misspell your username "last name"?
(sorry, not to be rude, just found it odd)
New business card name: CEO "Sat-ya ass down, yer gettin' laid off" Nah-dollah
Apple completely redesigned their UI in 2013 with iOS 7 (minimalist/modern UI) & Google followed suit. Microsoft (of all companies) already had a modern/minimalist UI since 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
In short, Apple pioneered the modern phone UI, but then Microsoft made a new one in hopes people would jump ship, only to discover that their competition countered back reminding people that the entire platform experience is what matters most.
Well, I'm a minion, not the ruler, and always have been, so I'm possibly the wrong one to ask seeing as how I lack the knowledge. Truthfully, I get that you can't keep paying people if the cash isn't there. I get that circumstances sometimes result in crappy outcomes. That's just life.
However, I think that, in a broad-reaching way, companies have become far more skewed and heartless in recent decades. I think that in a company the size of Microsoft, there's probably a little leeway when it comes to reassignment of talented people. I don't think that laying of 7K+ people is necessary. I've seen it time and again where a company has layoffs one month, and hires the next. They don't hire as many as were laid off, but they do find roles for people. Why not invest some energy into minimizing that turnaround? Further to that, why not give the employees some say? Maybe some would leave willingly to pursue other things leaving roles open for those who want to stay or would be hurt by leaving.
My dad once told me that back in the 50s when the factory he worked at had to let people go, they would often let go the youngest and most talented, the reason being that those people could far more easily bounce back from a setback and handle it than an older guy with a family to feed. Companies do not consider that at all anymore. People stopped being people and became numbers on a spreadsheet.
I don't believe that layoffs or job losses are avoidable and we can somehow all live in utopia, but I do think there's a space between that and showing up for work and being told you can just leave and we don't care where you go. And at the same time the bigwigs are writing politically correct canned statements about "our former colleagues" going through "transitions" about people whose names they never bothered to learn.
Honestly, I think they can do better.
Windows 10 has Exposé and Workspaces. As someone who has to use Windows at work, that's awesome.
That doesn't count, nor does it matter. The fact remains the iPhone was the first revolutionary Smart Phone in 2007 and no UI matched it. Microsoft followed suit in 2010 with their Tile UI. In terms of what you felt looked "better" in 2010 is subjective, and that still doesn't make Microsoft's UI the first modern UI, because it simply wasn't. What does it matter? If Microsoft's phones were so great over iOS they would've killed Apple's business. They didn't.
Well, I guess they'll have an opportunity to see what it's like to manage a product line with well under 10% of the market share. But Microsoft shouldn't be counted out quite yet.
I remember buying a Power Mac 9600 in '97 I think it was and telling my wife that would be our last Mac...because the company would be bankrupt and out of business before I was ready to replace it.
She wanted me to sell our (relatively small amount of) stock in the company but I resisted, figuring Apple needed every dollar to try to stay afloat.
The rest as they say is history....the iMac came out a year later followed by all the other ground-breaking products and Apple became the world's most valuable company.
And that Apple stock I hung on to put three kids through Ivy League schools.
So I wouldn't put a nail in Microsoft's phone coffin quite yet. But they'll need competent senior management and that seems to have been in very short supply for years at Microsoft. Then again, we can point to some similar periods at Apple.
I remember buying a Power Mac 9600 in '97 I think it was and telling my wife that would be our last Mac...because the company would be bankrupt and out of business before I was ready to replace it.
She wanted me to sell our (relatively small amount of) stock in the company but I resisted, figuring Apple needed every dollar to try to stay afloat.
The rest as they say is history....the iMac came out a year later followed by all the other ground-breaking products and Apple became the world's most valuable company.
And that Apple stock I hung on to put three kids through Ivy League schools.
So I wouldn't put a nail in Microsoft's phone coffin quite yet. But they'll need competent senior management and that seems to have been in very short supply for years at Microsoft. Then again, we can point to some similar periods at Apple.
You know, the issue would have been understandable if there was no money there. The layoffs a lot of the times happen because you're 2 cents off on your share price from some Wall Street investor estimate.
For someone that keeps talking about how Microsoft is now Mobile First and Cloud First he sure is making some strange moves with the dismissal of so many employees from their phone group while putting so much time into hololens and Minecraft.
Microsoft doesn't feel like one company like how Google and Apple feel. They feel more like 20 small companies that are all working independently and it's not resulting in an overall quality image, wrong approach.
Microsoft doesn't feel like one company like how Google and Apple feel. They feel more like 20 small companies that are all working independently and it's not resulting in an overall quality image, wrong approach.
Good. Let it die. Someone told me a website wasn't loading properly on a Windows Phone recently. I was shocked people still owned those.
None too surprising really. Just look at Lumia line-up. I can't tell which phone is what. If you ask me, Microsoft should make just one low-end phone (e.g., 640) with two screen sizes.[/URL]
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And there are also thousands of well educated english-speaking software engineers in the United States. Personally I prefer Apple to employ americans first, since they are an american company which appears to be proud of their legacy.
About right. Worst, you were buying a phone business from a socialist economy with a huge entitlement mindset in their corporate culture.
I don't know where you live but here in UK you see plenty of Lumia devices in the wild. Lot more than you can see Apple watches that Apple supposedly sold millions of.
That's funny how you would use the Watch as an example when the topic is about Smartphones. Hmm. Keep in mind, Windows Phones have been in existence for years. Watch was just a released a few months ago. Sheesh.