>>>Android continues to increase its market share, rising to > 80% of smartphones shipped in most recent 2013 figures. Yep, already at over 50% market share with 80% of new shipments going the Android way. Mathematically impossible to catch up when Android already has lapped WP 10 times and is speeding away into the distance. The race now is between Android device manufacturers- currently led by Korean firms Samsung and LG.
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>>>Just as Windows ruled by being overwhelming incumbent making it pointless to consider alternatives, Android has done the same for the foreseeable future on devices apart from Apple that continues to occupy its own curious wealthy niche. So all MS is doing is burning through cash to avoid having to admit that the emperor has no clothes. In time Google will be delighted to concoct a series of virtual small boys to shout out the truth- or maybe not, because in the internet age most people already know and it's not a problem for Google if MS sacrifices billions of $ of shareholder value to a lost cause.
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>>>For several years I praised Android - and I generally agreed, MS has had a big mountain to climb. My two cents....
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>>>1) I'm increasingly disappointed and frustrated with Android. Much of the MS criticisms about Android have truth to them - O.S. versions and apps have (IMO become increasingly buggy)
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>>>2) I'm upgrading soon and am switching (after nearly 4 years) from Android to iOS. Bottom line, you cannot beat iOS for usability and their ecosystem. Say what you will about Apple's tactics...and I can't believe I'm about to talk like a user and not like a developer....often I just want something where I can navigate quickly. iPad apps just plain work. Android apps don't always follow the rule about the shortest distance between two points.
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>>>3) I've seen and have played around with the newest windows mobile phones. Great camera, great O.S., nice features.... but still has far to go to hit the mass market. Sadly, (to use a bookstore analogy), it's still viewed by many as a specialty trade paperback. It's too bad because they ARE cool.
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>>Aggree with you. If I wouldn't use iphone I would be choose Windows Mobile. I know it's market is too small, but it really fast and stable more and more than android. My little daughter has an android 4.0 device, I think so even android 4.0 so unstable. I just wait for ios 7. I think so even iphone 3 better than all android phones because of it's OS.
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>Windows Phone is dead in the water. Microsoft put its full muscle behind it and it went nowhere. I considered it a telling sign when Charles Petzold (he whose Windows C book taught many developers how to write Windows code and who was memorably referred to as the Peltoldzoic Era) abandoned his Windows Phone series in MSDN Magazine to turn his attention to DirectX. Maybe he had just said all he had to say about Windows Phone and maybe he turned his eyes to more timely topics.

Actually I tried WM8, it so fast and good OS I think. But it's too late. Windows store is so small, no one want write for WM8 because of small market, market can't grow because of no one write apps for WM8. Vicious circle.