It's not a race. Android is king at releasing all these updates while at the same time, leaving some of their customers behind ala fragmentation. I hate that word and it is so cliche but it's really true. Now the same thing could be said for Wp7/Wp8 but the reality is, they wanted Wp8 to be on a unified architecture with their other software so as much as I hate it, it made sense. Android OTOH, has all these manufacturers releasing skins for their own devices, ruining the pure vanilla Android experience (unless rom'd), and pissing off an entire subset of users at each turn who do get 4.1.3.1.4 and those who are stuck on 4.1.3.1.3 etc.
Personally, I honestly don't care if WP is ever number one because the only place to go is down and you think the negative or biased journalism is there now, wait until WP is at the top and we'll have nothing but doom and gloom every single day and journalists actually wishing for the death of WP.
Just give me a few good games for time wasters, fill in the holes with a few solid "programs" (not apps darn it, I freaking hate that word and developer=programmer), and we're golden as far as I'm concerned. The reason why WP8 is exciting, is because it isn't mainstream and not everyone has it. Much like the original Droid and original iPhone used to be before they got so popular.