Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has asserted that the company’s exit from the smartphone business was a mistake that could have been handled better. Nadella accepted that giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake. “The decision I think a lot of people talk about — and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO — was our exit of what I’ll call the mobile phone as defined then,” he said. “In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones,” he added. Nadella took over from ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014. In 2015, Microsoft cut 7,800 jobs primarily in its phone business, and wrote off $7.6 billion related to its acquisition of the Nokia phone business. Microsoft finally confirmed in 2017 that Windows Phone was dead. The company’s co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates had also said that his “greatest mistake ever” was Microsoft losing to Android.