Of course, the other
other side of this is that Microsoft has, over the past decade or so, become a company that specializes in three things:
1. Shipping Windows, Office and XBox.
2. Showing demos of revolutionary "coming next year" technologies that never ever ship.
3. Occasionally shipping something that's not Windows, Office or XBox, and then killing it as quickly as possible.
The last two have especially dogged Microsoft's mobile efforts; every year we hear that "next year's Windows for (this year's hot mobile category) will revolutionize everything", every year we hear the cries of "at last! History will repeat and MS will crush Apple again!", and every year we realize they either never shipped last year's great mobile hope, or shipped one version of it and then announced it would be replaced by next year's great mobile hope.
So at this point, why should anyone in this industry be taking Microsoft seriously?
[Disclaimer: not MSFT employee]