Windows Phone was a glorious failure

This past weekend, Microsoft made official what was already known for years: the Windows Phone mobile operating system is dead. There’ll be no further development, no miraculous Windows 10 Mobile revivals, and no further attempts to compete with the overwhelming duopoly of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The new Microsoft, led by Satya Nadella, prefers collaboration over competition — or at least that’s the choice the company tells itself it has made in abandoning its thwarted mobile OS venture.

But the overall failure of Windows Phone masks a series of smaller successes and advances, which Microsoft and its hardware partners have never received enough credit for. At its outset in 2010, Windows Phone was the boldest and most original...

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