Tech

Microsoft's phone business fell off a cliff, sales for the Lumia were down 73%

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Microsoft only sold 2.3 million Lumia phones last quarter. That's a massive 73% drop from the same quarter last year, when the company sold 8.6 million phones.

In documents filed with the SEC, Microsoft explains that this whopping decrease in phone sales is due to "the previously announced change in strategy for the phone business."

That strategy was to lay off most of Nokia's employees and write down nearly the entire value of the acquisition and start building first-class apps for Android and iPhone instead.

And the lack of focus on Windows phones is having a ripple effect. Sales of phones by other makers, like HTC and Samsung, were down by 36%, too. 

Here's how Microsoft explained its phone business when it reported its Q3 fiscal 2016 on Thursday (emphasis ours):

Devices revenue decreased $248 million or 11%, driven by the previously announced change in strategy for the phone business, offset in part by higher Surface revenue. Phone revenue decreased $662 million or 47%, as we sold 2.3 million Lumia phones and 15.7 million other phones in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016, compared with 8.6 million and 24.7 million sold, respectively, in the prior year. 

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Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.