Comment by mark_undoio

The cheapness of the hardware is an interesting point.

I worked with an ex Nokia hardware engineer around that time and he said lots of them had left / been laid off (can't remember which) since Windows Phone could only run on quite specific chipsets (Qualcomm, I think), which basically made their jobs less useful.

But if cost was a factor then maybe that was part of the point, rather than a side effect of the decision.