You completely missed the point.
Lest we forget, the OP made some pretty lame claims that Microsoft has the "big picture" in mind as it attempts to lurch forward into the 21st century. That everything is part of a grand, carefully orchestrated Microsoft plan. Because he had a feeling, after using Microsoft products recently, that Microsoft had been planning all their recent failures to build toward some future ideal goal.
I don't think so. I think they're just reacting to each Apple success by feebly attempting to copy it in a knee-jerk reaction. Just to soothe investors.
With that in mind, here is my rebuttal (and note the use of the words "plan" and "planning"):
1) I have never seen MSFT working hard to convince anyone to buy a Tablet PC. Until now, that is. Should they have axed the product, knowing that the market was slim? Perhaps, but that is hardly the MSFT way - and, i doubt they lost very much in the end anyway.
Microsoft's total failure with Tablet PC is therefore their fault and their fault alone.
But yes, they do have a history of beating a dead horse. Sometimes it works (e.g. Windows 3.1.)
They stuck with a bad plan with Tablet PC, kept trying to push a sub-par product, and failed.
Tablet PC's 10+ year history of failure is either a symptom of the total ignorance of what consumers want or a symptom of arrogant indifference to said consumer. In fact, the failure could be symptoms of both ignorance and arrogance. Bill Gates never had the "common touch," and he built Microsoft in his own image. We've seen the results of that over the past 10 years or so, and that failure in mobile will just keep on getting worse.
Microsoft was born that way.
2) Legacy hurts. You can only go so far before staying with a platform costs more than killing it off. According to most, they had failed already - so why are you advocating staying on a failing course of action?
I am advocating better planning in the first place. You can't plan anything if all you do is hastily copy competitors' latest concepts. Because you don't know what that competitor is planning. You can't plan your own product's evolution because all it is is a reaction.
WinMob was a knee-jerk reaction to Palm's then-success. Microsoft tried jamming Windows, complete with Start button, into a small form factor. Instead of designing a better UX that was more appropriate for the smaller screen. And why not? Because they insisted on forcing the square Windows peg into the round mobile hole. Great plan.
Maybe the best plan would have been to kill off Windows Mobile 6.5, as they did, then not follow up with any hastily mashed-up successor. Maybe Microsoft should have saved all that time, energy, money, and carbon footprint, by not even trying to keep up in the mobile space.
Maybe the best plan would have been to leave mobile to Apple. And to just write apps for iOS. Microsoft *is* a software company, isn't it? (Or is it just a Windows + Office company? Big difference there.)
Can't win any, it seems. Not in mobile anyway. Maybe in the legacy desktop space.
5) Other OEM:s didnt seem to care much for WP before the Nokia partnership. If anything, the partnership seems to have worked to their advantage.
They didn't care because WP wasn't very good. And why was that? Could it be, oh, I dunno, the lack of careful product planning? Or something like that? You know, the kind of planning that successful companies do for their successful products.
Oh, and there's also the small matter of Microsoft stabbing their hardware partners in the back. Remember Microsoft PlaysForSure? The media player partnership between Microsoft and Archos, Creative, Denon, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Sony, Toshiba, and others? The partnership that Microsoft destroyed when they launched Zune? Once burned, twice shy. Beware hardware partnerships with Microsoft.
6) Obviously, WP7 failed to have a market impact. Again, why stick with a failing course of action?
Again, why not focus on your "core competencies" (Windows and Office, in Microsoft's case.) Why waste time, energy, money, and carbon footprint in a futile effort to replicate Apple's mobile success? Why not stick with a successful plan (milking corporate IT.)
7) Why choose? ARM and Intel have different strengths. One is light weight, the other a power house.
Because choosing one architecture, then making that choice work, is ...
wait for it ...
good planning.
Microsoft is fragmenting their own slice of the mobile computing market. Not that it makes much difference. They're dividing a miniature slice into multiple ultra-miniature slices. All of which will fall into the tiny little "other" slice of the overall mobile computing market share pie anyway.
"No compromises"? More like "no plan." And "no chance."
8) WP has Office without a desktop. MSFT is certainly ABLE to deliver office without a desktop - they, like me, just see no reason to restrict use unnecessarily. If i am going to work in Office (extensively) i want a desktop environment available. I would be surprised if the vast majority did not feel the same.
"No compromises"? More like "no new ideas." And "quickest dirtiest port."
And if you're going to work in Office (extensively) just tell your IT guys to buy a Lenovo laptop.
They'll erase Windows 8 and re-image it with XP. Just watch.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The entire world lives in the past. The average system deployed in the real world has a life-expectancy of 25 years. Businesses do want something that works, and then they want that working thing to work for a long time. Rapid release cycles may be nice in consumer markets, but for enterprise its a plague (in some industries, even Windows is moving too fast).
The entire world lives in the past? This is terribly bad news for Microsoft. Just terrible!
If Windows 7, or XP, or 2000, is good enough, then why bother with the crazy Metro-fied Windows 8?
Better to wait 25 years and see if Windows 8 has had enough service pack fixes to be usable.
Coffee will smell just as good 25 years from now. I'm certain of it.
Further, WinRT is hardly anchoring to the past. WinRT is rather a way to bridge past and future.
Hey, wow. Maybe Microsoft *did* learn from the Windows Mobile 6.5 to Windows Phone 7 non-transition. Maybe they really are trying to help migrate legacy Windows users to the inevitable mobile future.
Or maybe not. Having two separate "bridges" from the past to the future, leading to totally different futures, isn't very good planning. ARM? Intel? Can't decide? Support both. "No compromises." We'll just kill off whichever is the least successful.
Great planning.
.
.