No. Microsoft is just goddamned horrendous at public relations... to a point in which it's actually impressive.
I don't see how they can fail to market their assets this poorly when Apple and Samsung have made "How to do it right" so obvious. Most of the world is still stuck in October 2012 when the platform only had 120,000 apps to boast... Microsoft has a lot of game-changing content they aren't even letting the public know about. When Apple's not doing well, they talk about cumulative sales... which is sneaky, but smart. No matter how many analysts call them out on their BS, the mainstream isn't savvy enough to notice... and it builds the ever-important aspect of
consumer confidence. No matter how small Apple's marketshare becomes compared to Android, and no matter how many analysts publish articles about how Apple is becoming the new BlackBerry, Apple users have been given enough raw consumer confidence to feel like they've got the cream of the crop - which breeds positive reception, new users, and of course apps.
Microsoft can make great hardware all day and continue floundering if they keep underestimating the importance of PR. If they would do as much as advertise how much the store has grown, and be publicly aggressive about advertising that
hundreds more are added every day then
I guarantee they would be in a better situation.
I had a situation where a lady approached me in public while I was shooting with my old Lumia 1020 (which my wife now uses), noted that I had a Windows Phone and immediately asked how I was able to go without having apps like Instagram and Vine in which I simply showed her that we did actually have those apps. I spent all the rest of that day thinking about how simply that'd translate into a commercial that would easily let people who don't keep up with the platform know that it's not 2012 anymore... and that the app situation is in a state of constant growth (which it absolutely is).
...and just last week, brought my 950XL and Continuum Dock to my C# programming class (with
#Code as my IDE and a couple preconfigured devices so that all I needed was to plug in a monitor to my dock) and had the whole class turn their head when dude next to me said "You did not just freaking compile that on your phone."... another scenario that could translate into an awesome commercial.
Microsoft really needs to market those assets they're sleepin' on. Then consumer confidence improves, more units move, we can get more handsets on more carriers, a larger audience is reached, which will turn that hundreds of new apps per day into thousands and we'll have cyclic improvement... hell, dude... just talking about this makes me kind of want to apply for Microsoft's Mobile marketing division to see if I can slap some sense into them.