[__Joker]

More oft repeated history apart from the later part of the article which discusses the present and the future direction.

"The holy grail for Microsoft would be getting developers to write new software for Windows again ", this necessarily isn't true. The developer go where users and money are. And users not necessarily go to devices which have lot of apps. This might sound like a chicken and egg problem, but look at amazon, if developers are writing software for its devices, Amazon is bootstrapping its devices with software. I take out the other devices, the desktop and servers, might not have as much impact as it may sound.

Second, Xbox, Bing, may sound looser, but they may be interesting in the next round of battle. The smart phone battle is more or less is over and it is not going to make much difference, but the future of the smart device fields will be another story, if only MS can concentrate on the future in coherent way.