Seven Years and One Month Since Microsoft’s Funeral for the iPhone ⇥ engadget.com

Peter Bright reports for Ars Technica earlier this week:

During the weekend, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore tweeted confirmation of something that has been suspected for many months: Microsoft is no longer developing new features or new hardware for Windows Mobile. Existing supported phones will receive bug fixes and security updates, but the platform is essentially now in maintenance mode.

Microsoft already announced last year that they would stop making phones, and I expected this announcement would follow sooner than it actually did. Nevertheless, it’s unsurprising, and made worse by a cringeworthy funereal procession that Microsoft held for shipping Windows Phone 7 — their first try at an iPhone OS competitor — three and a half years after Apple first demonstrated the iPhone.

Vlad Savov writing for Engadget in September 2010:

An elaborate parade, replete with hearses and black capes, was organized last week to denote the passing of the BlackBerry and iPhone into the land of unwanted gadgets. We’d say this is done in poor taste, but we don’t enjoy stating the obvious. We will, however, enjoy the fallout from this poorly judged stunt.

They also danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at the same parade. To be fair to them, BlackBerry really has all but vanished from everyone’s pockets, but its replacements run iOS and Android, not Windows Mobile.