What went wrong? The iPhone took Microsoft by surprise, obviously.
#Break the pc windows 10#
It all ended with the slick but doomed Windows 10 Mobile and a massive write-off. That led to Windows Phone (which bore a remarkable resemblance to the ill-fated Zune music player), followed by Microsoft's purchase of Nokia. The journey started with Windows Mobile and a handful of devices with physical keyboards and a tiny stylus that stood in for the mouse. The biggest case study is the decades-long effort to convince consumers and businesses to run Windows on their phone. But it's a rare example of Microsoft's success in breaking out of the PC prison. Microsoft's Xbox hardware is basically a PC running Windows 10 with a game controller instead of a keyboard, and it's managed to survive and even thrive in its competitive niche thanks to PC gamers. Even the one counter-example proves the point. See also: Microsoft's steady retreat from consumer products is nearly completeįor proof, just look at the long list of Windows spin-offs that have failed through the years. But there's a much larger, simpler explanation: The market has decided that Windows is for PCs, period. The COVID-19 pandemic that locked down workers and disrupted supply chains just as the Windows 10X development cycle was beginning no doubt had a lot to do with the project's demise. Officials want it to be seen as a device that blurs work and life usages." It was based on a near-mythical Microsoft device code-named Courier, which was under development a decade earlier that lineage makes it one of the rare Microsoft devices that have been canceled twice. As my colleague, Mary Jo Foley noted at the time, "Microsoft is positioning Neo as being a new category. The Surface Neo was going to be a small dual-screen device, very much unlike a conventional laptop PC. Microsoft's lineup of Surface PCs now covers a wide range of hardware factors and price points - and every model is Windows 11-ready.