Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is the third chief executive of the software giant to admit the company has made some serious mobile mistakes. Satya Nadella took over from former CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014 and, just over a year later, wrote off $7.6 billion related to Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nokia phone business.

In an interview with Business Insider, Nadella admitted that Microsoft’s “exit” from the mobile phone business could have been handled better. Asked about a strategic mistake or wrong decision that he might regret, Nadella responds:

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. 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. 

Nadella is now the third Microsoft CEO to admit to the company’s mobile mistakes. Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates said his “greatest mistake ever” was Microsoft losing to Android. Google acquired Android in 2005 for $50 million, and former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in 2012 that Google’s initial focus was beating Microsoft’s early Windows Mobile efforts.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was also slow to respond to Android and the iPhone threat, focusing the company’s efforts on Windows Mobile while famously laughing at the iPhone, calling it the “most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard.”

Ballmer admitted in 2013 that he regretted not focusing on the phone much earlier. “I regret there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows [Vista] that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,” explained Ballmer. “That is [the] thing I regret the most.”

Microsoft has been focused on apps for Android and iOS over the past decade, though. The company is constantly updating its Phone Link app to link Android and even iPhone handsets to Windows, and Microsoft has a close relationship with Samsung to ensure its mobile Office apps are preinstalled on Samsung’s Android handsets.