Comment by majormajor
2 years ago
WP7 was more polished than Android - I went from an HTC Evo to a Lumia - but a lot of that polish was in the same style as early-iOS: fewer features and capabilities, just done well and with better consistency.
I think betting on either (a) MS beating Apple at their own game or (b) there being room in the market for two premium-limited-but-smoother-UX systems was a dicey call.
Nokia's hardware design advantage over that HTC was MUCH larger than WP7's UI advantage over Android, anyway. I would've stuck with Android but moved to Nokia in a heartbeat if that sleek blue slab of plastic phone ran Android.
But that was at least a year after the memo. They already had an incredibly polished system, Meego. Now Meego like WP7 had the problem of limited apps for the platform, but there were quite a bit more than WP still, largely due to significant OSS apps having been ported. There was also a good development story using the qt framework.
Also at the time of this memo, WP was essentially nonexistent. It was with Nokias switch that they gained some momentum and polish.