Why Microsoft Had to Buy a Phone Company

[Commentary] Microsoft wants to sell you a phone, a tablet, and a TV box that are not only running Microsoft software and connected to Microsoft services but that are designed and manufactured by Microsoft as well. This is because, perhaps, it has no choice.

Microsoft has seen, again and again and again, what happens when it doesn’t build its own hardware for consumers, or know exactly what it’s doing when it does. While buying Nokia’s phone business, and truly becoming a different kind of company than it has been for most of its nearly forty-year history, could be a mistake that ultimately proves fatal to Microsoft as we know it, continuing to rely on other companies to determine its fate in a post-PC world seems like it would be the most fatal mistake of all.