It may not be the most surprising revelation, given profits are sinking faster than a boat without a hulland big-name partners are jumping ship left and right, but the founder of Microsoft has presumably left Windows Mobile for the greener pastures of Google’s Android.
Microsoft’s decision, over the last couple of years, to bring many of its Windows Mobile exclusive apps and services to competing platforms, such as iOS and Android, shocked some pundits and fans and baffled others. “Why would we use Windows Mobile if everything good about it is already found in other ecosystems, while also enduring an atrocious app gap?” they wondered. As numerous proclamations by Satya Nadella about his vision for the future of Microsoft and excerpts from his recently published book suggest, the answer was, “You shouldn’t.”
The same reasoning is used by Gates to describe his reasoning for the change, remarking with a sheepish smile that he now uses “an Android phone with a lot of Microsoft software”. He doesn’t need to stick with Windows Mobile to be loyal to Microsoft services, just as millions of other fans have also discovered. When asked about using an iPhone, he responded quite simply with, “No, no iPhone.” While he doesn’t explicitly state which platform he switched from, Windows Mobile is likely the only one of the remaining OSs.
That makes sense since, unlike his successor, Gates was always a tech geek before being a businessman and Android has the far more open ecosystem compared to its biggest rival, and an open model which has led some to proclaim Google is out-Windowing Microsoft with Android. As the pioneer of that open ecosystem on the desktop, it makes sense for him to also prefer one on the mobile.
Microsoft may one day turn back its gaze to the mobile market with a great differentiator, known by the community as the Surface Phone, but until then, welcome to the club, Bill.