As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft does probably understand what it is doing in the phone space. I’ve been a long-time Windows Phone user, having switched from Android. My relationship with Windows oh phones goes back beyond the Windows Phone era, even. My first “smartphone” was a Windows Mobile 5 device. It was a beautiful thing.

The similarity between my Windows Mobile 5 device and the new Windows 10 Mobile devices, the Lumia 950 and 950XL, are striking. Not in form factor, technology, or usability, but rather in carrier exclusivity. In 2006 when I purchased the Windows Mobile device, carriers were locked down. Phones that existed within multiple carrier ecosystems had to be re-engineered internally and rebranded in order to fit the carrier’s whims. These days, there is a lot of talk—including talk from me—that Microsoft is angering the few loyal phone users hey still have by voluntarily adopting a carrier-exclusivity model for their long awaited (long past due, actually) flagship devices.

Microsoft has chosen to primarily sell their two new flagship models unlocked directly through the Microsoft Stores and their online counterpart. AT&T, however, has been given the opportunity to sell the Lumia 950 under the AT&T banner. It was originally thought that no other carriers had agreed to carry Microsoft’s fledgling line, but the CEO of T-Mobile, John Legere called “bullshit” (literally, his words) on the matter.

So, why then do I say that Microsoft may actually know what they’re doing? Well, it’s all about forcing a paradigm shift in the way Windows phones are treated, especially in the carrier-consumer relationship. If we view the Lumia line now as a Microsoft offering rather than a carrier offering that happens to be a Microsoft device, then we see much more clearly into the collective mind of the new Microsoft. Avoiding carrier update processes and having direct access to end users (support, telemetry, versioning, etc.) helps avoid the fragmentation issues for flagship Windows phone devices that plagues Android and will help close the leverage gap with Apple, although not the market share gap.

The one aspect where Microsoft truly did drop the ball was their choice to make the new flagships as GSM-based devices. Sure, the LTE bands served by the phone mean that Sprint and, more importantly, Verizon customers will be able to use the phone to a degree, but the experience will likely be far off from what the experience should be for using a flagship Windows device. With the availability of chipsets that support both GSM and CDMA as LTE fallback networks, it is a shame that Microsoft chose to ignore a healthy percentage (Verizon users) of their already minuscule U.S. market share.

Now, many Windows phone users (myself included) will just have to decide whether to leave Verizon or whether to leave Windows phone. That’s a pretty bad decision for Microsoft to have forced upon their tiny group of loyalists.