I don't get it. I thought this was the Windows Phone playbook - release as early as possible (2010), gain something like feature parity in fall 2011 (i.e. the

I don't get it. I thought this was the Windows Phone playbook - release as early as possible (2010), gain something like feature parity in fall 2011 (i.e. the Mango release) and team up with Nokia to make some great hardware (the Lumia). This is what Windows Phone people have been telling me since the beginning of the year. The virtues, logic and shortcomings of this have been evident from the beginning so I don't see how Ballmer can point at anyone but himself. It's a problem that anyone stretching the definition of "early adopter" already had a phone that did everything a Windows Phone does in 2009. Buying into a phone ecosystem sounds mundane to mildly entertaining to us, but it's a terrifying leap for most of the market - the vast majority of people will buy what their more technically inclined friends and family use. Think of how long it's taken for the iPhone to approach the prevalence of the Blackberry - how bizarre, then, that MS expected WP to bloom while two competent competitors are taking the market by storm. WP7's biggest fault has nothing to do with Andy Lees - it's too late to market.