Samsung Galaxy S8 - MS Edition - Can MS remain relevant in Mobile ?

MS recently made a shift in their mobile strategy by announcing a MS edition of the new Galaxy S8 that will be sold at MS Stores.

 The announcement seems to focus on Office, OneDrive, Skype and Cortana - but in reality MS has a pretty good sized portfolio of apps for Android and you can have a MS centric experience if you want on Android.

 For example - on my unlocked Galaxy S7 (which still hasn't gotten Nougat yet) - I run the following MS apps...

 Arrow Launcher
Office
Office Lens
Outlook
OneDrive
Cortana
Groove
MSN News, Money and Sports

 I'm not a big Skype person - so no big loss there.  But the reality is that much of the same content and services I consume on Windows 10 is available.

 But even with the large portfolio of apps - MS is struggling to maintain relevance in the Mobile space and is not taking advantage of the some of the strengths they have.

 For example - I don't expect to see Windows Hello or Continuum support on a Galaxy S8.

 Cortana is another example.  One of the fantastic features of Windows Phone with Cortana was the ability to read and allow voice reply to SMS (text) messaging.  But this is simply not available on the Android version - why ?

 Even apps like OneNote have a hard time with simple functions like cut and paste to other apps or content "smarts" like dialing a phone number from a note page, etc.   

 In reality MS is now competing in market where they are NOT the leader and in my opinion really need to raise their game.

 Regardless of what MS does from a hardware platform perspective in Mobile - it comes back to the core of MS - software.  

 Whether it's iOS or Android for MS to remain relevant in the mobile space - their apps need to be superior to the competition.   In reality they aren't and that's a problem.

 There are simply too many choices out there and rarely do MS apps rank highly in the app stores of the various platforms.  

 A few years back when it became obvious that MS was going to fail in the Mobile hardware & OS space - I made some predictions on the impact of that failure on MS as a whole.  

 That focused on developers.  UWP has been a failure so far and MS has lost an entire generation of developers to iOS and Android.  So now for MS to maintain relevance they not only need to port their apps to these OS - but need to make them better.  

 Sure I use the apps listed above - but do I have to ? No. I could easily delete every MS app listed above and still be able to perform every task I needed and a good user experience.  And that's what many users do.

 Personally I think this announcement with Samsung is a stop gap until MS reboots their mobile strategy for the 4th time and we see what comes from the Qualcomm partnership.

 While this deal with Samsung could just be a one-off - to me this shows a level of desperation.  In effect MS has nothing new to offer customers in the mobile space.  Most folks don't even know about the HP Elite X3 and even if they did would rather buy an iPhone or Galaxy.  

 I can't stress enough how much this is going to hurt MS in the coming years.   The Windows era is coming to an end and without a valid mobile strategy - MS could end with it.   

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