[CaptainDecisive]

There's a very large Windows developer community. And some of those developers have thought about "working individually, in smaller companies, or in startups, building consumer-facing apps or services", and then thought about having to learn a new language, and thought about having to learn a new development environment, and thought about having people seeing you with one of those phones (1), and decided that it wasn't worth the effort or pain.

So some of those developers are just the sort of people who might make the leap into the Windows 8 ecosystem. Microsoft has always looked after developers so I agree with fpgeek that it will be more about PR and marketing and image than the ability to attract developers. Indeed PR and marketing and reality distortion was what enabled Apple to become the dominant player in the smartphone market.

(1) See the religious wars article that happened to be on the front page concurrently with this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150951