>>but I do believe that MS will have a greater piece of the pie than what's being projected...I guess we'll find out soon enough.
I suppose you're better positioned to know some of MS's aspirations, but so too are the major hardware brands on whom MS relies. Take a look at what the main hardware crowds are doing, starting with HP, IBM/Lenovo and Dell. Even Asus that was saying Windows for its next slate as recently as June this year is now saying Android.
The Windows brand is looking staid- sort of like the Oldsmobile of the mobile OS roads, nice brand with plenty of prestige but not where the excitement lives any more.
I have nothing against MS- sheesh, I'm on record thanking them for allowing Fox to persist as long as they did- but they seem to have dropped the ball on this one. Or maybe they deliberately walked away, deciding that the mobile OS arena is going to be cheap and cut-throat with the main value residing in the backend infrastructure anyway. As you say, I guess we'll find out eventually.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1