The company has reportedly signalled that it will be wrapping up its operations in the mobile device market within the next few weeks.
The news was reported on Twitter by ZDNet reporter Mary Jo Foley, who said that a senior Microsoft executive had told her there was almost no money left in the phone business.
Renowned Microsoft commentator Paul Thurrott corroborated Foley’s report, saying that the wind-down of the company’s phone business is, “expected to be completed by the end of the current fiscal year”.
This would mean that Microsoft would halt its operations by the end of June.
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The reality was even more stark, however, with phone sales falling $730 million for the current quarter from the same period last year.The announcement may not be too surprising, given the waning power of Windows Phone devices around the world.
Microsoft did not even publish the results of its mobile devices division in its last financial results, with no new devices being released as the company finalised its messy divorce with Nokia.
Windows Phone now makes up just 0.3 per cent of all smartphones sold across the world in the last three months of last year, according to recent Gartner figures.
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The news means no more new Microsoft Lumia Windows Phone devices
The company has also been resizing its Windows Phone workforce in recent years, with tens of thousands of employees being laid off back in July 2015.
Microsoft also effectively wrote off $7.6 billion concerning its 2013 takeover of Nokia, marking one of the company’s biggest ever low points.
The company also recently downgraded work on its Windows 10 Mobile platform in favour of focusing on building other new hardware instead.
The company finally began rolling out Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update earlier this week, marking the latest generation of its smartphone platform.
However only a certain number of devices are able to download and install the software, including several Lumia smartphones such as the Lumia 640 and 640XL, Lumia 650, and Lumia 950 and 950 XL devices.
The mobile version of Windows 10 Creators Update is available to download now.
The download brings a number of mobile-specific features, including better ebook support for reading on the go, a new “Snooze” function for Microsoft Edge tabs, and a smoother way to many Wi-Fi connections on your device.
There’s also support for full-colour, updated emojis, better Bluetooth connectivity, and improvements to Cortana that allow you to use your voice to control playback and volume of your music.
[“Source-express”]
