Blaming it on lack of apps is easy, but why is that? My hypothesis is that MS did the same thing with Windows Phone as Google does with chat platforms. MS had

Blaming it on lack of apps is easy, but why is that? My hypothesis is that MS did the same thing with Windows Phone as Google does with chat platforms. MS had Windows Mobile 6.5. It had glorious phones like the HTC Diamond and the HTC HD2. It competed with the iPhone and Android, but it was steadily loosing because the UX essentially belonged to a different era, one where resistive touchscreens and styluses were the norm. WM 6.5 survived many many years afterwards MS drops WM 6.5 and replaces it with Windows Phone 7 with no upgrade path, no compatibility, no migration path and no native apps(only CLR). Phones were cool even if technically limited. MS then drops WP 7 (up to 7.8) and replaces it with WP 8. Again no upgrade path and only partial compatibility but at least we finally have native apps (and games). By this point the race was lost. People were no longer willing to invest in the platform and already iOS and Android were a long distance ahead. Phones were already lagging behind Android counterparts with few flagships. MS was also suffering because of Qualcomm. MS finally released WM 10 and it was finally a really nice OS that just lacked apps, even from Microsoft themselves which started to release apps on Android and iOS first or only. Microsoft also slowly lost its hardware partners after it bought the biggest one, Nokia. The only phones were Lumias from MS and 1 phone from HP. At this point everyone saw it as a dead platform with a cult following. At the end, it was a really nice OS. MS gives up, uses Android on the Surface Duo (which was made for Windows Mobile) and signs a partnership with Samsung to preload MS apps on Galaxy phones. Meanwhile, you could upgrade an iPhone for 4 years or more. And even if the original was very very lacking (no apps, just webapps, no video, no copy paste, no file system, etc.) it captured the imagination and Apple iterated. And Google (and hardware partners) iterated in lockstep. And now both are reinventing the wheel in lockstep. Other than foldables, we have not seen an innovation in this space for a long time.