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

My colleague Javier Lacourt was talking a few hours ago about how Microsoft needs developers. I think it needs something more important.

You need your own cell phone. A new Windows Phone.

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

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

And it doesn’t matter for one simple reason: computers can’t compete with mobile phones.

And no one at Microsoft Mobile.

Is it sad? Reality: Google and Apple share that cake Including Android and iOS, and Microsoft’s role in this field remains. They offer access to their ecosystem, but they know they’ve lost that battle.

Bing can’t compete with Google, Outlook doesn’t matter much if 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’re better or worse than Android and iOS: they don’t compete on equal terms because there are already other pre-installed native ones that fall back on Google and Apple platforms. What matters is the ecosystem, and Microsoft’s ecosystem on mobile phones is practically irrelevant.

It is terrible not only to look back, but to look forward. Microsoft had already lost the mobility war long before it bought Nokia and threw in the towel.

It’s very expensive for Microsoft, but that deficit doesn’t stop growing: every day that goes by without its own mobile platform is a day Microsoft loses relevance and money.

And yet, it’s true that the company hasn’t fared badly despite that mobile disaster. 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 its card with Gemini. We’ll find out what the second one has to offer next Monday.

But in both cases, the future is clear: if artificial intelligence succeeds, the one we 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 will allow a third party to 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 new model, GPT-4o, it did so by offering native ChatGPT clients for iOS and macOS. Windows One, they said, would come “later,” without specifying.

How is this 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 nifty options to “talk” with 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 make mobile phones again

This is a very bad sign for a Microsoft that has certainly made huge gains in the PC world, but lacks that influence in the mobile world. The solution, perhaps crazy, is simple.

what Microsoft Reliance Windows Phone.

The challenge is undoubtedly huge, especially since the thought of competing with Google and Apple at this point seems difficult. And yet, things have changed a lot in recent years, both in hardware and software.

The only thing worth noting when it comes to hardware is that Microsoft doesn’t have its own mobile chip. It already has AI chips, but it will depend on manufacturers like Qualcomm in that department, at least in the short and medium term. This is not a big problem: most manufacturers – Samsung included – do this

Things are more interesting in the software department: the Copilot + PC launch showed that Microsoft is already fully prepared for its Windows 11 ARM. It also doesn’t talk about “Windows 11 ARM” on those computers, and the operating system for the company is one even though the version could be x86 or ARM. This seems to make the adaptation of Windows 11 ARM to mobile phones reasonable.

The second element will be its native applications, and again it does not seem difficult to think that Microsoft’s Edge, Bing Maps, Outlook, Office 365 can adapt to the screen 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 will be other options, such as promoting a Progressive Web Application (PWA). The performance, quality, and fluidity of the experience certainly won’t match native apps, but at least the option will be there.

A Microsoft mobile with Microsoft AI

The effort will certainly be huge for Microsoft, and this crazy idea is actually not new. It has been raised before, and probability has created expectations in the past. This is demonstrated by some videos and conceptual images provided by some designers in recent years, such as the following

If Microsoft relaunches Windows Phone, it will once again have a chance in the mobility space. It’s impossible to know whether its implementation will be significant enough to compete, but what is certain is that Windows Phone will have a perfect vehicle for the company to compete in the future.

You can suddenly power both your current and future ecosystems. And precisely That’s where artificial intelligence comes in.Which is eventually going to take over our cell phones—which it does in the absence of glasses—and which will no longer be on Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS, but on Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

But remember, the company has already tried to return to the mobile market. He did it with the Surface Duo, but the foldable dual-screen device based on Android was a colossal failure. Here the procedure should be very different, and it should be managed by Windows Phone based on Windows 11 ARM with its own operating system.

Considering how much Microsoft is investing in this area, it doesn’t seem very attractive to risk dependence on its rivals. And still restart Windows Phone Seems like a crazy idea.

¿ And not?

Picture | Cade Lin

In BDtechsupport | Copilot+ invites us to live the “Age of AI” in Windows 11: It might be a good time for Windows 12 to arrive