During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox (Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players), a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. It has been criticized for monopolistic practices (and the company’s software received criticism for problems with ease of use), robustness, and security. (more…)