Not even Windows 10 was enough to save Windows Phone

Microsoft said Thursday that it sold half as many Lumia smartphones as it did a year ago, and that the trend will continue—what some might call a virtual death sentence for Microsoft’s Lumia smartphone line. In its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Microsoft said that it sold 4.5 million Lumia phones during the fourth calendar quarter, down a whopping 57 percent compared to the 10.5 million sold during the same period a year ago. Phone revenue as a whole declined 53 percent, or $1.2 billion. Even worse, Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood told analysts to expect that its phone revenue would decline a comparable amount in the coming quarter as well. That means that by the end of March, Microsoft’s phone business will be worth roughly $636 million in terms of revenue. That’s roughly three times the revenue recorded by Blackberry’s hardware division in November—and BlackBerry, of course, has basically transitioned into an Android phone company. Like the Black Knight, Microsoft’s phone business may not be quite dead yet, but how long does it have to go?