From the article:
Analysis Microsoft stubbornly refuses to let go of making hardware, but now the reasons why CEO Satya Nadella has not followed his clear instinct to ditch devices (except Xbox) are becoming clearer.
We have analysed many times why Microsoft should not make smartphones and tablets, mainly because of conflicts of interest with the OEM partners which have always been the basis of its model. However, there is the defensive reason that without the former Nokia products, there would be very few Windows handsets at all. The software giant is ill-equipped, in terms of its business model and its capabilities, to be a vendor of mass market hardware. Yet it does need Windows 10 to live up to its promises of spanning every kind of device and screen, which means continuing to provide users, especially in the business sector, with the option of a Windows smartphone...
...The situation is very different for the Lumia smartphones, which are not defending a dominant position, like Surface, but struggling with single-digit market share and no obvious role in life except to ensure that W10 options are available across all form factors.
The first Lumia smartphones designed specifically for Windows 10 made their debut with all the genuinely strong attributes of former Nokia products - the innovative Windows Phone user interface, now the basis of the whole W10 experience: the top class imaging. But they launched without US carrier support and with the usual challenge of a far smaller apps base than Android or iOS.
Since Nadella slashed into the former Nokia business and pulled smartphone activities back to fewer models and markets, the main focus is the enterprise space, and the idea that W10 smartphones can be companions to their more successful tablet and PC stablemates – an argument often used by Apple, of course, which believes that adoption of one of its devices nearly always leads to the uptake of others. It is a cornerstone of the W10 strategy – and another borrowing from Apple – that the new Microsoft OS should do the same, providing a sufficiently enticing user experience for customers to want it on all their screens, and offering the simplicity of a single set of apps and interfaces on each one.
"These devices promise to fuel even more enthusiasm and opportunity for the entire Windows ecosystem," claimed Nadella in a statement, while devices chief Panos Panay went further, claiming that the W10 handset would be a natural extension of the huge installed base for the operating system on other products...
Absolutely. We should all be past over-analysing recent Lumia sales now, proclaiming that 'Windows Phone is dead' - I've heard this numerous times now. Of course it's dead, in terms of sales and having a future - that's because it's evolving into something which is part of a much bigger ecosystem. Almost all current Windows Phones will get their free Windows 10 Mobile upgrade, plus new models will appear from Microsoft and others over the next few months, all running the same universal applications and with much the same interface as on the desktop/laptop/tablet.
I'd go for caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, but that's too dramatic - probably.
In the original article but not quoted above was a reference to Google and Nexus smartphones, the idea being similar, to showcase what can be done and not to worry too much about the exact sales numbers. I see the Lumia 950/950 XL and even the upcoming Surface Windows 10 Mobile phone in 2016 as in the same 'Nexus' category. As Nadella said, above: "These devices promise to fuel even more enthusiasm and opportunity for the entire Windows ecosystem". And that works both ways.
Hopefully.