I'm very skeptical as well, but Microsoft is not a company without the resources to make something like this work. Microsoft is the leader in two major markets

I'm very skeptical as well, but Microsoft is not a company without the resources to make something like this work. Microsoft is the leader in two major markets: browser and desktop. They are losing traction (albeit slowly) and are being dominated in the mobile phone market. This kind of maneuver is obviously the result of a company that knows it's dying. From a long term point of view, this is probably the right move; mobile and desktop appear to be converging and Microsoft's desktop OS could not be more different than their mobile OS. The same can no longer be said for Apple's Mac OS X and iOS (they're still not the same, but with launchpad and app store, it's not hard to see what Mac OS X is headed towards). It has the potential to be very good and they could step on a lot of people's toes. It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out for them.