<div>At the technology show Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a familiar figure takes the stage to make a presentation.</div><div> </div><div>It's Stephen Elop, once head of Nokia, famous for telling Nokians they were standing on a burning platform and they had two choice – burn or dive into the unknown.</div><div> </div><div>But today, Elop is back with Microsoft, from where he came to Nokia in the first place. As vice president of Microsoft Devices and Services, he is still presenting some new Lumia smartphones. It almost seems like old times, except that now it is hardly about the devices. It’s really about the services.</div><div> </div><div>"We should stop obsessing over the mobility of devices," said Elop. "We should focus on the mobility of experiences."</div><div> </div><div>That was the starting point to what may have been the introduction of two budget devices, the Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 SL, but was really about the upcoming Windows 10 and how Microsoft would make the shift to being present on many platforms besides its own – and then push services from there to customers.</div><div> </div><div>"Windows is our home but we are extending our presence to different platforms. Our products will deliver experiences across different platforms but bring them back to Windows", said Elop.</div><div> </div><div>Microsoft is promising a "One Microsoft" with an experience that has strong commonalities throughout. What you do on one system, goes up to the cloud and is available to the other, no matter whether you’re using a PC, an iPad or a Lumia phone or any other phone.</div><div> </div><div>With this in mind, Microsoft has actually been releasing apps for its competitors' products, such as a far more workable Office for iOS and Outlook for iOS and Android that some feel beats the native email experience.</div><div> </div><div>On demo was a selection of features from Mi rosoft Office that show how much easier it is going to be to use its several thousand features. More context awareness and semantic understanding will help quickly get to what you ask to do – in natural language.</div><div> </div><div>Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Siri and Google’s voice search, is ever-present and will also respond to conversational commands and queries, a re-designed Skype will make it more easy to use. They even showcased a foldable keyboard that would work with any device, including phones, of course.</div><div> </div><div>Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has begun to take steps in a post-PC era that are different from the company's moves a year ago. Of course, mobility is a space every big company is trying to dominate and the jury is out on who the biggest players will be in the next couple of years.</div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
