At some point in the future, Microsoft will offer its users a single operating system experience across all screens, making things a lot easier on application developers. Rather than having to worry about developing apps for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox all separately, they’ll just be able to develop apps for this singular platform.
That’s what we’re getting from CEO Satya Nadella’s words on the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. Here’s a look at the earnings report.
Nadella is quoted as saying, “This means one operating system that covers all screen sizes,” Nadella said to analysts on the quarterly conference call. “We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes.”
As Business Insider notes, the company has been hinting at this strategy for months, having announced “Universal Windows Apps” developer tools at its conference in April.
“In the past we had multiple teams working on different versions of Windows,” Nadella said. “Now we have one team with a common architecture. This allows us to scale, create Universal Windows Apps.”
A couple weeks ago, Microsoft posted a huge internal email in which Nadella outlined the company’s overall strategy and “core” focus. The following week, he announced that Microsoft will be eliminating 18,000 jobs over the course of the next year (13,000 within six months).
With multiple Windows teams being consolidated into one, it’s likely that a number of those cuts will be made within that group.
You can find the transcript to the earnings call here.
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