Microsoft’s co-pilots flood everything except mobile phones. A crazy proposal: relaunch Windows Phone

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 own cell phone. A new Windows Phone.

The reason is simple. The company seems to have bet its future on artificial intelligence. Their investments both in OpenAI and in data centers spread across the planet demonstrate this. But that may not be enough.

It doesn’t matter that the co-pilots are everywhere. That they have taken over Windows 11, Azure or Microsoft 365. That they are now a striking – and disturbing – purchase argument for the new era of Copilot+ PCs with AI.

And it doesn’t matter for a simple reason: the computer cannot compete with the mobile phone.

And Microsoft is a nobody in mobile.

Is it sad? reality: Google and Apple share that cake 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 cannot compete with Google, Outlook does not matter much when Gmail or Mail are pre-installed on Android or iOS phones respectively, and the same goes for many other tools in these ecosystems.

It doesn’t matter if they are better or worse than Android and iOS: they do not compete on equal terms because there are already other pre-installed natives that feed back into the Google and Apple platforms. What matters is the ecosystem, and on mobile phones Microsoft’s ecosystem is practically irrelevant.

That’s terrible not only looking back, but also looking forward. Microsoft had already lost the mobility war before buying Nokia and long before throwing in the towel.

That has been very expensive for Microsoft, but that deficit does not stop growing: every day that passes without its own mobile platform is a day that Microsoft loses relevance and money.

And yet, it is true that the company has not done badly at all despite that mobile debacle. Right now Microsoft is the most important company in the world by market capitalization, but it could be much more relevant.

It has an important card with its commitment to artificial intelligence, but the problem is that all its efforts are probably not enough to win over mobile users. Google and Apple will take care of that. The first has already shown her cards with Gemini. We will know what the second one proposes next Monday.

But in both cases, the future is clear: if artificial intelligence manages to succeed, the one we will use on our Android phones will be from Google and the one we use on our iOS phones will be from Apple. Neither one nor the other is going to let a third party steal their wallet.. Not on something as important as this.

In fact, Microsoft is already worried, and rightly so. A few days ago, when OpenAI introduced its buzzy new 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 it possible? It seems that OpenAI didn’t care that Microsoft had invested billions of dollars in it: when those native applications were released that included those flashy options to “talk” to ChatGPT, the company co-founded by Sam Altman simply looked the other way. His argument was that they were simply “prioritizing where their users are.”

Microsoft should make mobile phones again

That is a very bad sign for a Microsoft that certainly has a lot of gains in the PC world, but lacks that influence in the mobile world. The solution, probably crazy, is simple.

That Microsoft relaunches Windows Phone.

The challenge is undoubtedly colossal, especially because it seems difficult to think of competing with Google and Apple at this point. And yet, things have changed a lot in recent years, both in the field of hardware and software.

In the case of hardware, the only notable thing 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 section, at least in the short and medium term. It’s not a big problem: most manufacturers—Samsung included—do it.

In the software section 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 those computers, and for the company the operating system is one even though the version may be x86 or ARM. That seems to make the adaptation of Windows 11 ARM to mobile phones 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 think that millions of developers are now betting on a third platform, but perhaps it is not necessary: Windows 11 supports Android apps.

But there would also be other options, such as the promotion of 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 actually not new. It has been raised before, and the possibility generated expectation in the past. This is demonstrated by some videos and conceptual images offered by some designers in recent years, such as the following one.

If Microsoft were to relaunch Windows Phone, it would once again have an opportunity in the mobility space. It is impossible to know if its execution would be notable enough to compete, but what is certain is that with Windows Phone the company would have a perfect vehicle to compete in the future.

You could suddenly power both your current and future ecosystem. And precisely That’s where artificial intelligence would come in.which seems like it is going to end up taking over our cell phones – in the absence of glasses that do so – and which would no longer be Google’s on Android or Apple’s on iOS, but Microsoft’s on Windows Phone.

It must be remembered, however, that the company has already tried to return to the mobile market. He did it with the Surface Duo, but that foldable dual-screen device based on Android was a colossal failure. Here the approach would have to be very different, and it should be carried out by its own operating system, by that Windows Phone based on Windows 11 ARM.

Considering how much Microsoft is investing in this area, risking dependence on its rivals does not seem too appealing. And yet relaunch Windows Phone seems like a crazy idea.

Or not?

Image | Cade Lin

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