I have no hope at all. IMHO it will be the same as WP7, with only 1 major update to include (some) features that iOS and Android have had for years.
I was expecting for Windows Phone the same "strategy" that MS used on Xbox, with WP7 being the Xbox, and WP8 the 360:
Original Xbox: Better hardware and lower price than PS2, with innovations such as a HDD for faster loading times and the ability to create custom soundtracks for the games; A killer app (Halo) and others top-notch exclusive games like Project Gotham Racing, Rallisport Challenge, with more things being added later, like Xbox Live. It was easy by the time that MS was spending big money and doing everything to gain brand awareness, despite the slow sales and burning billions per year. They continued releasing great exclusive titles like Ninja Gaiden, Forza, and investing hard to bring PS2's AAA exclusives like GTA and Winning Eleven (PES). The original Xbox was a flop in terms of sales, but MS successfully showed the world that they were a serious player on the market and people already knew what a Xbox are.
Xbox 360: Now an established brand coming 1 year earlier than the competition with full of new features like an even better Xbox Live with Xbox Live Arcade and Indie Games, Achievements, connectivity to Windows Live Messenger, wireless controllers, USB ports to stream music from a MP3 player and another killer app (Gears of War). And since then, Xbox 360 continued to be regularly updated, bringing features like Games on Demand, movies and tv shows for sell or rent, Kinect, all those "apps" like Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu and others.
It's clear that MS take Xbox seriously, now compare this to WP7 and WP8...
Even after I used my WP7 for almost 2 years seeing almost no effort from Microsoft to keep the OS updated compared to competition, I was hopeful that the WP8 would be the real deal, specially after almost 6 months of complete mistery, coming with killer apps and exclusive games, useful new features et al, but they came with nothing but an OS with almost the same flaws as before. So I lost my faith...