One of the most significant changes to Microsoft’s recent attitude towards development has been its aggressive push for cross-platform presence of all its key apps, and a laser focus on productivity. CEO Satya Nadella highlighted both as he showed off, among Microsoft’s other offerings, what he dubbed the “iPhone Pro” in his most recent keynote at the Future Decoded in London, reports Business Insider.
Nadella’s “iPhone Pro” is, of course, no stealthy new oversized prototype from Apple, but a simple iPhone, albeit fully loaded with Microsoft’s productivity apps, including the staple Office apps of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, OneDrive and Skype, and newcomers like Microsoft Sway, Delve and the recently acquired Sunrise calendar app. The same phone previously came on stage during Nadella’s keynote at DreamForce 2015, where he first coined the term “iPhone Pro.”
While Microsoft still holds most of the marketshare in desktop OS and productivity suites, it has also realized that in this age of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and mobile, and the choice is either bringing services to users everywhere or risk irrelevance. It is therefore understandable that Microsoft’s progress on other platforms has received so much attention from Microsoft, sometimes even dwarfing its own. The effect is even more pronounced in the mobile space, where the company’s homegrown OS holds but a meager marketshare.
During his 40-minute talk, Nadella also shows off his current main phone (no, it’s not the iPhone), the new Lumia 950XL using Wunderlist, another of Microsoft’s productivity acquisitions, as well as the much-touted Continuum feature, allowing a desktop-like experience from a Windows phone by connecting with a screen through a dock. The Surface line and HoloLens, Microsoft’s upcoming bet in the future of computing, were also briefly mentioned.
On the software side, Nadella discussed his favorite Microsoft services, including the updated Outlook in Office 2016, and Windows Hello the newest biometrics security features baked into Windows 10.
Overall, Nadella touched on all prominent products in Microsoft’s repertoire to showcase a comprehensive picture of the company and its directions, which will be quite interesting to see unfolded in the years to come.
