I disagree with that. Android does dominate cheap smartphones right now, but by and large they are terrible devices, and I (anecdotally) know plenty of people who regret their purchase. Compare to the Lumia 710, which is a very, very decent phone, and WP7, which is a very "put together" OS.
I absolutely think that MS could dominate the low to mid range smartphone market if they do it properly.
Inside the US where carrier phones are dumbphones, iPhones, Google-branded official-partner Android phones, or outliers, you're totally right - Windows Phone has a great shot at taking over the low-end to mid-range cheap-but-still-branded Android phones from LG, Samsung, and Motorola.
Overseas, where "free OS smartphone" is a market niche occupied by 500 Chinese things people in the US have never heard of with no Google branding whatsoever (and no or hacked Android Market access), Windows Phone doesn't stand a chance, because it can't be downloaded and hacked together.
What percentage of highly successful, heavily used Android apps rely on native code? It seems that 99% of the dev community is fine writing Java.
Hell, why are WP7 devs clamoring for native code anyways? It's because the .NET performance is terrible. The failure IMO is in .NET, not the lack of C++. The capitulation and addition of C++ support isn't a strict win either - devs now have access to performance, at a substantial engineering effort cost. Doing things that would have been simple on other platforms now requires C++ hackery.
Wrong. It's not because of .Net performance. They're asking for native support, mainly to make much easier to port games and other apps from Android and iOS to WP, being able to actually reuse code, instead of a complete rewrite. Nobody wants to write the entire app several times, when targeting to multiple platforms.
It could, in fact, be easier to mechanically translate between Java and C# than going C++.
In contrary, Microsoft have a great native toolchain (years of work in IDE, debugger, compiler) there but decided developers should not use it. And this is why it is so stupid.
For those that are unaware, WP7 and WP8 are built off of different kernels.
To be honest though, I'm not sure normal people will even want a Windows phone. Most people seem to equate Windows with brokenness, and Apple with luxury, so given that assumedly they will cost a simliar amount to an iPhone, I can't see your average person going for them.
Maybe I'm wrong, once Win8 is out and Metro is everywhere, maybe the phones will seem more desirable.
So... where's the marketing? Why haven't MS even mentioned them?
On carphonewarehouse (UK), the only way to find them is to search - they have an Apple section, an Android section, but no Windows section. The front page has Apple, Android, even Blackberry, but no hint of Windows...
How can you forget to market your product?
(I am being sarcastic... yes, $500million was spent and no, marketing was non existent... on the upside, most of the marketing team got made redundant yesterday)
But there's another market to consider here, as well: Android can be a free OS overseas because it's freely downloadable and the source can be quickly ported to a random device made in a random Chinese factory, which Microsoft will probably never see or care about (and hence never demand patent licensing fees for).
This is a market niche that shouldn't be underestimated - ever looked at the "Phones" section on DealExtreme or had a friend come back from China with some kind of weird dual-SIM concoction? These are immensely popular in China and India, and now instead of paying contractors to write horrid proprietary dumbphone OSes, their manufacturers can pay contractors to quickly bake together an Android port (often with hacked Market access).
The Lumia 900 is a very big step in a very good direction. MS needs to double-down on this and stop kowtowing to Samsung et al, who are pushing out half-assed turds of phones that do a disservice to the brand.
The "free OS" segment of the market is taken by Android, and I think it'll take an act of god to unseat it at this point. WinPhone's only hope is to compete at the higher end with the likes of iPhone and Galaxy phones.
And marketing. God, the marketing. Where is it?
MS is betting the company on WinPhone, but where is the marketing message? Why aren't bus sheltered swimming in these ads? Why aren't they all over TV like Android and iOS is? Why are WinPhones still hiding in the darkest corners of the AT&T stores?
This is the biggest failing of WinPhone IMO - it's a fine platform and a fine product, but nobody knows about it.