MS will do a lot better if it focuses on making android betters, supporting .NET apps in android (yay Mono!). Maybe in the future they could revisit the mobile OS thing and have better luck then but for the near future it looks very unlikely.
The mark of a good company is adaptability. Intel went from RAM chip maker to creating microprocessors, MS itself went from creating BASIC compilers to making OS's. With Azure, .NET, Office, Windows etc. I think they have enough areas to make money off. Its just their strategy of adapting windows to mobile devices didn't work.
For those just targeting Android, specially given the global market share, they are better off with plain Java/Kotlin + NDK, than adding yet another layer to debug and extra APK size.
And despite my advocacy, when targeting both mobile OSes, customers at enterprise level tend to pick Ionic or pure Web approaches, despite the lower UX.
I suppose you didn't know that HP made calculators either?
Information changes but a UI should be static, a UI that changes based on what is available is a recipe for a poor user experience. I have a hard enough time navigating rows of icons (as opposed to a list of app names), I don't need the icons changing randomly.
Aside from that, one of the missing features of tiles was interactivity, on android I've had an MP3 player widget on my home screen since I first got an HTC hero and playing music is a core feature for my phone. As flashy as tiles were they didn't have that level of functionality.
I don't love the design, but I like it.
Maybe some people believe the tile home screen is ugly, but they are more informative compare to icon based home screen.
Yes, there are some bad designs in the Windows 10 Mobile, but all of them are fixable. And once those problems get fixed, it will be gorgeous.
I feel very sad about their current failure, and I don't think simply give up is a good choose.