Disappointing Lumia Sales Hinder Microsoft’s 2018 Deadline for Windows 10

It was 2015 when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be holistically adopted by 1 billion devices, midway into 2018. While things are still sitting pretty at 350 million in July 2016, Microsoft is way off the deadline and has retracted away from fulfilling the same. With two years left in the bank, the company has already dropped weapons and confirmed that it will not be able to deliver as promised. Microsoft has also blamed the decreasing popularity of Lumia handsets for this major shortcoming.

It all started with a realizable dream as Windows 10 is still going strong on tablets, PCs, Xbox, HoloLens and consoles. Based on these positives, Microsoft opted for the mid-2018 deadline for pushing this operating system into 1 billion devices. However, with the recent rate of adoptions, the company is expected to fall short by at least 200 million. While, 800 million is still a respectable figure, it is adrift from the original goal by a pretty long margin.

Microsoft has finally confirmed that the deadline won’t be met and while Windows 10 will eventually reach the 1 billion mark, mid-2018 won’t be that timeframe.

Microsoft quoted,

“Windows 10 is off to the hottest start in history with over 350m monthly active devices, with record customer satisfaction and engagement,”

“We’re pleased with our progress to date, but due to the focusing our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of 1bn monthly active devices. In the year ahead, we are excited about usage growth coming from commercial deployments and new devices – and increasing customer delight with Windows.”

While this news might be a bit saddening for any windows-centric mobile app development company, the likes of MacOS and Android Nougat can certainly rejoice.

 Microsoft has always been a bit biased towards PCs and tablets for fulfilling the deadline but smartphones have certainly been the biggest pitfall when global penetration is considered. The Lumia impact hasn’t been strong enough followed by major resistance to Windows 10 upgrades over PCs.

Microsoft has finally admitted that concentrating on the mobile platform for Windows 10 isn’t feasible at this moment. Moreover, the smartphone outlook cannot be readily changed with the precedence of Windows 10 Mobile. Lumia devices have therefore taken a backseat with the company scaling down productions and investments— followed by job cuts.

Adding to Microsoft’s woes were the inefficient rollout of Windows 10— with the free update being delayed by months. Moreover, there were a lot many bugs with the free version— later touched upon the by company. Most of the users were already frustrated by this moment when Microsoft excluded a few gadgets from the previously mentioned list. This angered many— negatively impacting the figures.

According to the executives, the company— at least for the time being, won’t be concentrating on smartphones, deliberately pushing down the mobile version of Windows 10. Instead, the company will be pushing forth Windows 10 for enterprises— in order to improve the global rollout.

Loss-lending zone of Lumia devices will be looked upon— somewhere in the future.

Most importantly, the free upgrade plan for existing Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users to Windows 10 will expire by the end of this month. However, this will not affect the adoption rate as most of the upgrades have already concluded.

Now when the ‘Upgrade’ card isn’t functional anymore, the company will have to concentrate on IoT, enterprise purchase and device sales for upping the ante.