My colleague Javier Lacort was talking a few hours ago about how Microsoft needed developers. I think it needs something even more important. You need your phone. A new Windows Phone. The reason is simple. The company seems to have bet its future on artificial intelligence. Its investments in both OpenAI and data centers spread across the planet demonstrate this. But that may not be enough.
It doesn’t matter that copilots are everywhere. They have taken over Windows 11, Azure, or Microsoft 365. That they are now a striking — and disturbing — buying argument for the new era of AI-powered Copilot+ PCs. And it doesn’t matter for a simple reason: the computer can’t compete with the mobile phone. And Microsoft is a nobody in mobile.
It is the sad reality: Google and Apple share the pie with Android and iOS, and Microsoft’s role in this area is residual. They offer access to their ecosystem, but they do so knowing that they have lost that battle. Bing can’t compete with Google, Outlook doesn’t matter much either when Gmail or Mail are pre-installed on Android or iOS phones respectively, and the same goes for many other tools in that ecosystem.
It doesn’t matter if they are better or worse than Android and iOS: they don’t compete on equal terms because there are already other native ones pre-installed that feed back into the Google and Apple platforms. What matters is the ecosystem, and in mobile devices, the Microsoft ecosystem is practically irrelevant.
That’s terrible not only looking back, but also looking forward. Microsoft had already lost the mobility war before it bought Nokia and long before it threw in the towel.
This has been very costly for Microsoft, but the deficit continues to grow: every day that passes without its own mobile platform is a day that Microsoft loses relevance and money.
And yet, it’s true that the company hasn’t done too badly despite that mobile debacle. Microsoft is currently the largest company in the world by market capitalization, but it could be much more relevant.
It has an important card in its commitment to artificial intelligence, but the problem is that all its efforts will probably not be enough to win over mobile users. That will be up to Google and Apple. The former has already shown its cards with Gemini. We will find out what the latter is proposing next Monday.
But in both cases, the future is clear: if artificial intelligence succeeds, we will use Google’s on our Android phones and Apple’s on our iOS phones. Neither of them will let a third party steal their wallet. Not in something as important as this.
Microsoft is already worried, and rightly so. A few days ago, when OpenAI presented its new and chatty model, GPT-4o, it did so by offering native ChatGPT clients for iOS and macOS. The Windows one, they said, would arrive “later”, without specifying.
How is this possible? OpenAI didn’t seem to care that Microsoft had invested billions of dollars in it: when those native apps were released that included those fancy options to “talk” to ChatGPT, the company co-founded by Sam Altman simply looked the other way. They argued that they were simply “prioritizing where their users are.”
Microsoft should go back to making mobile phones
This is a very bad sign for a Microsoft that certainly has a lot to gain in the PC world, but lacks that influence in the mobile world. The solution, probably crazy, is simple.
Let Microsoft relaunch Windows Phone.
The challenge is undoubtedly colossal, especially since it seems difficult to imagine competing with Google and Apple at this point. And yet, things have changed a lot in recent years both in the hardware and software fields.
In terms of hardware, the only thing worth mentioning is that Microsoft does not have its own mobile chip. It already has AI chips, but it would depend on manufacturers like Qualcomm in that area, at least in the short and medium term. It is not a big problem: most manufacturers — Samsung included — do it.
In the software department, things are even more interesting: the launch of the Copilot+ PCs has shown that Microsoft already has its Windows 11 fully prepared for ARM. It doesn’t even talk about “Windows 11 ARM” on these computers, and for the company the operating system is one even if the version can be x86 or ARM. That seems to make the adaptation of Windows 11 ARM to mobiles plausible.
The second component would be its native applications, and again it does not seem difficult to think that Microsoft could have its Edge, Bing Maps, Outlook, Office 365 adapted to the screens of our mobile phones.
The third component, the most problematic, would be third-party applications. It is not easy to imagine that millions of developers are now betting on a third platform, but perhaps there is no need: Windows 11 is compatible with Android applications.
But there would also be other options, such as the push for progressive web applications ( PWA ). The performance, quality and fluidity of the experience might not match that of native applications, of course, but at least the option would be there.
A Microsoft mobile with Microsoft AI
The effort would certainly be colossal for Microsoft, and this crazy idea is not new. It has been floated before, and the possibility has generated excitement in the past. This is demonstrated by some conceptual videos and images offered by some designers in recent years, such as the one below.
If Microsoft were to relaunch Windows Phone, it would once again have a chance in the mobility space. It’s impossible to know whether its execution would be remarkable enough to compete, but what is certain is that with Windows Phone the company would have a perfect vehicle to compete in the future.
Suddenly, it could boost both its current ecosystem and the future. And that is precisely where artificial intelligence would come in, which seems to be going to end up taking over our mobile phones – in the absence of glasses to do so – and which would no longer be Google’s on Android or Apple’s on iOS, but Microsoft’s on Windows Phone.
It should be remembered, however, that the company has already tried to return to the mobile market. It did so with the Surface Duo, but that Android-based foldable dual-screen device was a colossal failure. Here the approach would have to be very different, and it would have to be led by its operating system, Windows Phone based on Windows 11 ARM.
Given how much Microsoft is investing in this space, risking dependence on its rivals doesn’t seem too appealing. And yet, relaunching Windows Phone seems like a crazy idea.