Did it fail its own metric, or did it simply fail to live up to a boast? In other words, did Microsoft ever say something along the lines of, “We need this to sell a billion devices by mid-2018 or we’re screwed” or something more like, “Hell, we won’t even be shocked if this sells a BILLION units by 2018!”
So people don’t think I’m defending Microsoft, I’m still in shock how Edge ever made it past beta testing.
They set a clear, unequivocal, do-this-or-we-all-look-like-fools GOAL. An installation (not sales) goal of One Billion Things (computers, mobiles, tablets, devices) that contacted Microsoft at least once a month.
Obviously it's not a billion sold (paid) copies, since they've given 350 million or so away for "free".
I think it probably happened as a rash BOAST in a sales meeting ("I think we could see a billion of these things in 3 years"), and it got picked up by executives in upper management, and it became a formal GOAL.
I doubt they actually did much research to see if it was possible. "One billion" is a very suspiciously round number. Why not 900 million?
I don't think they're "screwed" per se, but they do look awfully foolish, first for making the boast, and then for failing to accomplish it (granted, they haven't failed yet strictly speaking, but they've admitted there's not a chance in hell of making it).