I think it leaves MS comfortably in the valley of failure that they've been trying to climb out of for quite a while now. "Teetering on the edge of failure" fa

I think it leaves MS comfortably in the valley of failure that they've been trying to climb out of for quite a while now. "Teetering on the edge of failure" far from being overly pessimistic, is actually far too generous. By any reasonable business measure (marketshare, mindshare, profitability) WP7/7.5 has been a dramatic, obvious failure. If not for the enormous will (read: $$ reserves) of MS, it would have died a well-deserved (from a business perspective) death. NOTE: I am not commenting on WP7/8's technical or aesthetic merits, nor on the overall consumer benefits of having a robust third competitor to iOS/Android. In all of those regards, WP8 should definitely stick around; but we could have said the same of WebOS (and many did).