There are 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world of which 1 billion are smartphones, which leaves billions of smartphones coming online in the coming decade. The smartphone market has most of its growth ahead of it. That growth will not be on iOS because apple doesn't do low-budget.

That growth will be mostly on android, but there's plenty of opportunity for it to be on windows phone as well. Microsoft has made some smart moves here. They've used windows 8 as a foot in the door to get people used to metro. The pc market may be shrinking, but there are still a billion pc's out there which will gradually be replaced with windows 8. They've also made sure that windows phone runs well on low budget devices (better than android even). And they've made sure that developing apps for windows phone is easy and cheap.

At this point i would not count microsoft out yet. Android is going to be the dominant player, but google seems not to care as much about the app ecosystem as microsoft. If google doesn't fix the piracy issues it's not inconceivable that windows phone becomes a more attractive platform for app developers. I hope this will be a three-horse race, as neither android nor iOS are a great fit for me.

Branding theory goes against your claims. It's not the oportunity that matters, it's the behavior and psychology of consumers.

RIM is dying for the same reason windows phone is a dud: both companies have failed to produce meaningful innovations and the public recognizes that.

First, there seems to be a lot of agreement that the Metro interface is innovative. I think it's also a meaningful innovation, but each to his/her own.

Second, pretty much everyone would agree that the early Android versions were not really innovative and pretty much a copy of iOS (which is certainly not the case anymore). Also, history is littered with inferior systems with little innovation that eventually won. So, it doesn't seem to be the case that the consumer necessarily chooses for 'meaningful innovations'. There's also price, branding, luck, etc.

Third, it is very strange to compare RIM and Windows Phone. RIM is more like Apple: one operating system, one device vendor. Windows Phone is more like, erm... Windows ;) or perhaps even Android: one operating system, competing device vendors. The dynamics are completely different, e.g. a phone vendor might choose to push WP or Android more, depending on what is offered in terms of differentiation, royalties, patent licensing costs, etc. Also, like the grandparent says, Microsoft as quite a popular ecosystem to leverage WP (Windows, XBox 360, Office, etc.).

First, too little, too late.

Second, Android's main innovation is being an open source OS available to anyone to use / adjust / distribute.

Third, the comparison to RIM is that the public doesn't expect meaningful innovation from Microsoft anymore. Even though Metro is a reasonable improvement, it's far from enough to make the public care.

When microsoft released IE everyone considered it a joke. It had no marketshare, nobody wanted to use it, and the common opinion was that microsoft was doomed beause netscape was going to make windows superfluous. What could be learned from what happened after were two lessons: (1) public opinion is not the end-all decider of a product's chances, and (2) when microsoft hooks something on the windows train it has incredible momentum, even when it doesn't seem like it. WP8 is hooked on that train in a way that previous windows mobile variants weren't.

IE won by force. The anoligy doesn't seem right.

Not just by force. IE 4 and 5 were better than what Netscape had on offer during that time. They were faster and had fewer JavaScript quirks.