Can Microsoft make a comeback with the Surface Phone?

Can Microsoft make a comeback with the Surface Phone?
No matter how good the overall environment is, even if you are at the forefront of the trend, there will always be products and services that cannot keep up with the times and are in a downward trend. Just like the domestic movie box office is booming, many domestic movies easily have a box office of tens of billions, but there are still junk movies with a box office of only tens of millions. The current Microsoft mobile phone is like a third- or fourth-rate domestic movie, with sales and marketing that are simply not up to par! Stuck in the quagmire and unable to break free, Microsoft mobile phones represented by Lumia models are experiencing a more brutal market trial, and their performance is completely a surprise to Android and iOS phones - it is simply terrible. But as the entrance and carrier to the mobile Internet world, Microsoft will never give up the smartphone business. Under the severe situation, the once-rumored Surface Phone has surfaced again. Can Microsoft make a comeback in the mobile smart terminal market with it? Endless decline! Microsoft mobile phones are too pathetic Microsoft released its second quarter financial report for the 2016 fiscal year ending December 31 on January 29, and this financial report can be described as "bloody". The report shows that Microsoft's revenue for the quarter was $23.8 billion, down 10% year-on-year; operating profit was $6 billion, down 23% year-on-year; net profit was $5 billion, down 15% year-on-year; diluted earnings per share was $0.62, down 13% year-on-year... What's worse is that the Lumia phone, which Microsoft has high hopes for, sold only 4.5 million units in the fourth natural quarter of 2015, a 57% drop from 10.5 million units in the same period of the previous year, and revenue also fell 49% year-on-year. It should be noted that the total global smartphone sales in the same period were 399.5 million units, and Windows Phone accounted for only 1.1%. At the same time, the global market share fell to 1.9%. In fact, Microsoft's mobile phones have never had a time to shine. Even the so-called sales peak was only 10.5 million units sold in the fourth quarter of 2014. Judging from the shipment volume of Microsoft phones in recent years, from October 2011 to December 2015, Microsoft and Nokia sold a total of 110 million Windows Phone phones, while the total sales of iOS and Android phones in the same period reached 4.5 billion! It can be seen that Microsoft phones are already in an endless decline! Although Microsoft has not abandoned or given up its mobile phone business, the reality is extremely cruel. The previously high-end Microsoft phones have become a marginal role in the market similar to BlackBerry, which makes people sigh. Surface Phone is not a panacea, and the ecosystem has begun to collapse . It is precisely because of the unsatisfactory performance of Microsoft phones that the news of Surface Phone has been rampant recently and has become the biggest hot spot. The reason why Surface Phone is highly expected is that the market performance of its fellow Surface series tablets is getting better and better, becoming the mainstay of Microsoft in the mobile terminal smart device market, and leading a new direction for the transformation of business notebooks. Because of this, Surface Phone will naturally be given various halos of "saving Microsoft". At present, if you enter "www.surfacephone.com" in the browser and confirm it, you will be redirected to the Microsoft official website, and it will go directly to the page of Surface products. The existence of this domain name at least shows that Surface Phone may be real. Even if no more news has been revealed, it may be in the development state and may appear in the market in the future. This gives Microsoft's die-hard fans a little comfort, hoping that Microsoft can make a comeback with Surface Phone. But in fact, Surface Phone will not be a panacea to save Microsoft. Previously, in order to "de-Nokiaize", Microsoft deleted all Nokia-related information on Lumia phones and added Microsoft's logo, but it did not stimulate sales. If Surface Phone is just a change of soup but not medicine, it will be difficult to be recognized by the industry and consumers. Unless Surface Phone brings not only a change in name, but also a complete subversion of the comprehensive form of smartphones. In addition, Microsoft's ecosystem in the mobile market has begun to collapse, unable to provide more help for Surface, and even affecting the development progress of Surface Phone. In mid-December last year, private photo sharing application Path announced that it would abandon application development and support for Windows Phone platform and focus on Android and iOS platforms. Earlier, Alipay was also reported to have stopped supporting the WP system. What's even more cruel is that at the end of January this year, Tencent stopped developing applications for the Windows 10 Mobile platform. The relevant developers have been transferred and only maintenance personnel are left. This means that there will be no more updates to the WP versions of QQ, WeChat, etc., and it also declares that WP phones are completely "finished" in China. Once the Chinese market with the greatest potential is lost, Microsoft's future development in mobile smart terminals can be imagined. Microsoft needs to speed up integration. The tragic Microsoft mobile phone business wants to rely on Surface Phone to revive its glory and make a big splash, but the possibility is very small. After all, the competition of smartphones now is no longer limited to hardware, design, appearance, etc., but more about the prosperity of the ecosystem it has built. In fact, Microsoft's original idea was very good. It wanted to connect the PC, mobile, cloud, etc. to make it a unified platform so that devices can be freely converted-the new Lumia flagship phone can be transformed into a small PC. But there is nothing to be done about it. Microsoft's pace is really too slow. Compared with the increasingly fast iteration speed of smartphones, Microsoft phones are just walking at a snail's pace! In a situation where time is of the essence, Microsoft's lazy style will naturally be defeated by its competitors. If Microsoft wants to make a comeback, it must continue to speed up its integration and complete the unification as soon as possible to truly bring its own advantages into play. Microsoft, you should be more careful. It is easy to "die" if you live off your resources!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.

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