Microsoft Azure doubles up to $800m a quarter – and is wiped out by dying phone sales

Redmond is popular with the retail sector – which won’t touch AWS because Amazon is a competitor

Sounds like bullshit. For the retail sector, as for any sector, AWS is just another service provider. Azure is perhaps simply better at migrating existing stacks to run on MS hardware, whereas AWS requires redesign.

"This fiscal year we invested in innovation"

As opposed to last year, where you just wasted money on Windows Phone that you have now all but killed ?

"Invested in innovation" : the new CxO-speak for wrapping useless words around non-existent information.

Brilliant waste of breath.

If they keep making a few Enterprise phones

Running WP10, but maintaining a superb camera, then it is still a very nice system.

The 950 available now (£300, damn cheap, with a Continuum adaptor) will keep the diehards like me, who don't need an app for everything, happy.

Web pages often do the job, Amazon are dropping their WP app for instance.

UWP would allow them to wrap their web pages in an app, along with automatic login etc. so that it presents more like a full app.

The cons: The TripAdvisor WP8.1 app is beautifully presented, the web wrapper, not so much.

The pros: The web wrapper app has all the web page functionality and matches the web page operation, for easier use.

It will be interesting to see if many more UWP apps appear and thus more for the phone and perhaps some OEMs start making phones again.

As for a burning platform, also not so much. WP10 gets updates along with Win10 and the anniversary edition will come to the phone at roughly the same time.

There is a lot of benefit to having the same codebase, despite some obvious UI issues. Since the phone-only platform, updated through MNOs etc., was less than successful, it is a moot point as to whether one prefers WP10 or not.

The UWP Maps app is a perfect case in point, it now allows multiple, simultaneous search tabs on a map, even on the mobile version, incredibly useful and only present because the App written for the PC added the feature. As of now, using HERE map data, the WP10 Maps is superior to the preceding HERE maps/navigation system, Cortana integration, search tabs, live Traffic Camera snapshots, multiple routes, auto-rerouting, manual rerouting, still has 3D buildings, rotation, angle, Cityscape, auto-zoom, all with offline maps stored on the SD card, brilliant and indispensable, especially when abroad.

And the Office apps have hugely more capability now because they are UWP.

I do hope a ton of companies do UWP apps, Banking for instance would be a good target, allowing the banks to use the higher security available with UWP to increase safety and being able to have a mobile version with little or no extra development.

Multiple Platforms a good idea??

Sorry for being a bit of a heretic; again. (Disclaimer I use Android devices)

Back in the neolithic i.e 80s~90s there was only one majority platform for computing and that was Windows. With all it's faults annoyances, security holes etc. But it was a good thing because it was the dominant platfom for the computers that most people used both at work and home. Knowledge was widespread so people could easily change jobs, support was easy to find and the 'apps' were readily available.

What I want from a hand held mobile computer today is a device that is easy to use covers a wide range of price points and speciifcations (screen size, memory, camera quality etc.) and offers the functions I use; phone, calendar, mail, social media with occasional use of navigation, entertainment and other apps. Plus Cloud backup\sync that can easily be used by my other devices Dayjob PC, Tablets etc.

I don't like Apple; not because of their kit which is perfectly OK if a tad expensive. I dislike the attitude of the company. Years ago I had to use NeXt kit and the St Jobs arrogance infected them as well.

Free markets are good, anti competition and anti trust laws are good; they stop outright robber barons and leave room for challengers to come through; but for all practical purposes if one mobile OS becomes a defacto standard does it really matter.. ?

So remind me?

Why did we need the TIFCAM and Win10 abomination that is a "unified OS" for mobile and computing again? Seems like MS is pullout out of the mobile market again.

The power myth

For over a decade MSFT had lateral motion, but the forecast was always "to the moon!" based on their tyrant status. Your money had better returns stuffed in a mattress. It will be interesting to see if they can do that again now that their dominance of technology is broken. I think not.

Pull the plug...

Look at how long MSFT put up with the losses from Xbox. They tend to keep throwing good money after bad.

always look on the bright side of life

Well one positive in 2016 for Microsoft is this year they will probably make more profit for the entire year than Apple does in any single quarter. Hasn't always been true in the past.

STEM

"The company paid a tax rate of seven per cent on the past quarter's results; worth remembering the next time Microsoft whines about the US not investing enough in STEM education."

The fuck is that supposed to mean? Somehow it is Microsoft's job to pay enough taxes to get people to take interest in STEM? No amount of money can change peoples attitudes towards hard work. STEM isn't popular in this country because it isn't easy. On the flip side, it pays well for those who have the intelligence and desire to pursue it.

There is a cultural problem in this country (the US) that is showing more and more people less interested in education and work and more interested in handouts and pissing their lives away playing video games*, watching TV, playing gangsta or doing drugs (or all of these at once). 'Social' media has us 'engaging' with other people without ever having to see their faces. Until there is a shift in what people think is important, and how they relate to each other, STEM will continue to be unpopular in this country, and blaming the government or corporate tax rates is not only naive but childish.

*

I like a game as much as the next guy, but I don't while away countless hours playing them. There is more to life than staring at a screen for 6 hours a day. And there is a real world out there that needs attention. It won't go away just because you try to ignore it...

And accolades to Pokemon Go for getting people outside...