I really hope that is somehow Microsoft’s gameplan. Otherwise how on earth did they justify abandoning mobile phones. I mean some of their stuff was amazing (zune), and usually I am not a fan.
> Otherwise how on earth did they justify abandoning mobile phones.
No one was buying Windows Phones, and no one was making apps for Windows Phones, and this had gone on for many years, and not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part.
How could they not abandon mobile? What options were left to them?
Buy a bunch of third-party apps (like Sunrise and SwiftKey) and slowly but surely integrate them into your own products (like Bing and Outlook) to gather more data?
I'm entirely used to one of them (SwiftKey) and I've tried several others as well. They've all offered amazing user experience, but I'm just not comfortable using Microsoft's Launcher for example.
Which is what Microsoft is doing. So if we're considering this part of their mobile strategy (which is fair), Microsoft hasn't actually abandoned mobile at all.