They launched a product that wasn't good enough and harmed their brand, then what customers they actually had they fucked over with the next release. Windows Ph

They launched a product that wasn't good enough and harmed their brand, then what customers they actually had they fucked over with the next release. Windows Phone 7 and 8 were both bad at this, and then they did it again with the transition to Windows 10 Mobile, at which point there was almost no chance of being able to put a market together. In a way this was because the phone didn't utilize Microsoft's strengths effectively enough to acheieve consumer success, as well as a general strategic problem with Windows and it's design in general. They should have made the first release basically an XBox phone if they wanted to get consumers on board. Gamers are a target audience that would be willing to make sacrifices to jump onto the platform and establish a user base, which is required to develop a decent ecosystem. The whole 'Metro' interface has really been a failure for Microsoft as well. They should have simply stuck to Aero or a derivative of it, and kept mobile and desktop computing separate as Apple has. And of course there's the whole issue of timing. Ballmer didn't seem to take iPhone seriously while Google did and they took immediate action to establish a viable alternative. Had Microsoft had their eye on the ball, it very well could have been them dominating the smartphone market. Or at least they could have been a third platform that actually survived.