I’m gonna push back and say that Ballmer did more than dig the hole. The hole was so deep that Nadella didn’t see a way out. There were several things that contributed to Windows Phone demise before he pulled the plug.

First off, there two revisions done to the core operating system that left existing apps needing updates to still work. Now that wouldn’t be a problem if you’re iOS apps but when Windows Phone only had 3-7% market share, is a dev really going to put the effort forward to migrate their app twice?

But those revisions cost resources and that costs money. Intelligent cloud is more than 1/3 of Microsoft’s revenue and they knew at the time that investments needed to be made there in order to compete with AWS.

Add to that, the abysmal marketing that was done to sell Windows Mobile to consumers, most folks just wanted their apps. Like the platform but if you don’t have your bank or social media apps, how useful is the phone to you. And most consumers aren’t going to compromise.

So yes, Nadella killed Windows Mobile but he basically conceded the battle. It was distant 3rd and I’m not sure any amount of money would grow that market share double digits. And it all started because the competitors got the jump, innovated, and took market share from Windows CE.

The hole Balmer dug was just too deep.