They've slowly aligned themselves in the background with Facebook, Yahoo, and even Apple against Google. They just inked another licensing deal with Foxconn for use of Android and Chrome OS of all things.

Maybe reengaging or conversing with one of the WP dev evangelists might make additional progress - maybe not immediately, but establishing a relationship, comtinual dialogue, and persistence can sometimes help turn a large ship.

I'm pretty sure today it is clear that the number of apps in the store is not important compared to say, what apps are in the store. but till today, I still see campaigns by the local WP dev evangelists putting out contest to promote people submitting as many apps as possible (e.g. giving a prize for submitting 5,10,20,50 apps, etc).

Even now, despite poor sales (presumably), calling their agility glacial would be over complementing them.

they can't. but is offering a free achievement system for indies going to net them enough to compensate for the loss of AAA developers on xbox? probably not. microsoft's earnings came out last week - they're still beating google on both gross and net revenue. They're not entirely stupid over there. I agree with you, they definitely don't seem to be progressive or well positioned for the future, but they're making money.