[turtlesdown]

MSFT spent $7.2 billion dollars on Nokia in 2014 to try to increase their market share, which failed.

>Much like the death of the keyboard slider form factor on Android, the lack of sales came from consumers having no options to buy than not wanting the product.

I think it is very safe to say that no one wanted a Windows Phone, despite the backing of MSFT and tens of billions of dollars spent.

[WorldMaker]

Microsoft spent that money to stop the bleeding that their last non-corporate OEM (HP being the only other OEM making devices, and those only targeted to big enterprise) was likely to either go bankrupt or switch to Android because of the race to the bottom of cheap Android (and Android knock-off) hardware changing the phone market. Microsoft buying Nokia was a much a symptom of the problem as an attempt to correct it.

The platform didn't fail for lack of fans or for lack of merits, it failed as much because hardware is a tricksy game and Android played that game better and didn't anger the US Telecoms while doing it. (Microsoft had the US Telecoms actively avoiding trying to sell Windows phones, which certainly didn't help.)