I think this article also was making an assumption that the iPhone was a once-off product rather than just the 1.0 of an ongoing program. The challenge for Micr

I think this article also was making an assumption that the iPhone was a once-off product rather than just the 1.0 of an ongoing program. The challenge for Microsoft and all the other incumbents wasn't to catch up to the original iPhone, but to overtake the trajectory of the iPhone product line. It also missed the ramifications of the smartphone industry being in an exponential growth phase at the time: being able to upgrade existing phone hardware to Windows Phone 7 and work around the missing sensors needed for the new features was not a competitive advantage. It was Microsoft wasting developer effort for the sake of hardware that would rapidly (within a year or two) decline to a trivial fraction of their install base.