May has not been kind to Microsoft. In just the span of two weeks, the Redmond, Washington-based company sold its feature phone business to Foxconn and laid off 1,850 employees. Still, the company maintains it’s not out of mobile just yet.
In a new memo obtained by The Verge‘s Tom Warren, Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s head of Windows and devices, tells employees emphatically, “we’re scaling back, but we’re not out!” He goes on to state the company will continue to “develop great new devices.”
Myerson doesn’t explicitly name any devices, nor when Microsoft plans to release them, but he’s likely referring to the long rumoured Surface Phone the company’s Surface division, led by Panos Panay, is reportedly developing. The device is supposed to be released sometime later this year.
After reaffirming the company commitment to Windows 10, Myerson offers some encouragement to the team that just saw many of their co-workers laid off.
“When I look back on our journey in mobility, we’ve done hard work and had great ideas, but have not always had the alignment needed across the company to make an impact,” he says. Myerson then goes on to quote an Ars Technica story, which documents how the company managed to get all its devices under one ecosystem, stating: “And as long as it has taken the company, Microsoft has still arguably achieved something that its competitors have not… It took more than two decades to get there, but Microsoft still somehow got there first.”
Myerson ends the memo by saying, “For me, that’s what focus can deliver for us, and now we get to build on that foundation to build amazing products.”
Read the full memo here on The Verge.
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