Microsoft and Amiga Games Inc press release

[agami]

... I'm strictly a "place and take calls" feature-phone kind of person.

You?!?!? Nooooooo, Really?!?!?? :p

... at a point where 5% is good news for them.

5% is nothing to be sneezed at. For well over a decade Apple made enviable profit from 5% of the PC market. And seeing how they're coming in late, with a sub-par OS/ecosystem, celebrating 5% seems like the sane thing to do, even for a giant like Microsoft.

[agami]

MS has been making terrible phone operating systems for over a decade...?

Yes I know that, I used to use (and still have in the cupboard somewhere) a Windows Mobile Smartphone.

They were late to the Capacitive Multi-touch iPhone-esque simple yet powerful UX paradigm smartphone. It was widely acknowledged that MS was "caught sleeping at the wheel" in the smartphone space. They tacked on phone call and SMS functionality on the PocketPC OS and thought that ought to do it.

And RIM were all about the physical keyboard and most other copied that.
Google were the only ones flexible enough to take the work done on Android and make corrections to match the Apple iPhone experience. But even that took a while. I remember the first post iPhone Mobile World Congress that was  8 months after the release of the first iPhone and 13 months after the original announcement at MacWorld 2007. I expected to see a slew of copycat attempts and there was nothing. It wasn't until later in 2008 (October) that the G1 was released, and let's not fool ourselves, the G1 was nowhere near the iPhone 3G that was released a few months earlier.

Windows Phone Series 7 was Microsoft's true entry into this new smartphone world which came late and didn't have the features, but it showed a lot of promise and it had a giant behind it, something Blackberry lacks. Windows Phone 8 is an improvement showing that Microsoft want to be in this space even if it means being No. 3.

Microsoft can do it too. They have enough money that they don't have to make profits until Windows Phone 9 comes out. These games are played over many years and one has to have the funds and stamina to stay in. Just like with the first Xbox; Three years of losses for the 7 years of profits from Xbox 360.

[agami]

@agami

I looked at WinPhone 7 & 8 when they came out, Yawn........ Wake me up when Windows Phone 69 comes out if it's still around.

For Xbox360 you forgot to add +RRoD for millions of customers. There are charts that show the Xbox devison has lost more money overall then it's ever brought in.

I agree, the UX value of WinPhone 7/8 features are largely subjective, as they are for pretty much any system; Where some people may fawn over Live Tiles and SmartGlass you on the other hand may yawn.

And I understand the anti-Microsoft sentiment, I really do, but the annual reports show the Xbox division as one of Microsoft's profit leaders. Microsoft is a publicly listed company (MSFT) and the annual reports can be downloaded.

Unless they skip a whole bunch of numbers I doubt they will ever reach Windows Phone 69, and even then, what makes you think they'll get it right in that version?

Unfortunately for Blackberry, and humans in general, Windows Phone is the 3rd smartphone platform and deservedly so. Microsoft has the infrastructure: the cloud apps, the syncing and messaging channels, the Xbox tie-in, the desktop, the servers, and tones of mulla.