Microsoft earnings: Surface sales up, Windows Phone sales down

The phone business was always going to e tricky, with IOS and Android, although windows phones are not bad, the cheap Chinese phones just have there own skins over android which means no Windows O/S penetration. So all MS can do is use these Lumia as the main selling tool, which against cheap good quality Chinese phones want work

I like Windows phones, but MS has no functional phone strategy right now. Its two flagship phones don't work on Verizon. And those flagships have nothing that sets them apart other flagships. (Continuum is interesting but not terribly useful in the US where people have desktops, laptops and tablets already.) Add in a poor app library and it's no surprise that their phones are tanking.

I like the interface, and I hope their Surface team can do better with the phone strategy than their Lumia team did. If they come out with an interesting Surface phone, I'll be back on the Windows Phone bandwagon. But until then, I'm stuck using my S6 Edge because there aren't any good Windows phone options.

On the Surface end of the discussion, it's no surprise that their revenues are up 60%. That's what happens when you come out with a good product that sets itself apart. Hopefully the Surface team can do just as good a job with phones now that they are in charge.