If WP is so repellent so users (I'm not saying it is, but following the logic), is it better to just scrap it and use NokiaAndroid across the whole range?)
You tend to see smartphone market share only as a means by which to earn money. More market share = more sales = more money.
While I agree that is the ultimate goal, I tend to see market share also as a means through which companies can exert
influence and control market and technological developments. Apple has demonstrated this a few times already, and they are currently at it again. Apple still makes insane amounts of money, but they are losing their ability to dictate where the smartphone market is headed and they have long lost their ability to dictate their terms to carriers, together with their market share.
Using Android, the best MS can do is deny Google some of that
influence. Using Android doesn't improve MS' standing in the influence and power game however, because MS doesn't control Android. That is why I disagree that scrapping WP is a reasonable strategy, at least for now.
Regarding apps - Nokia X will not immediately have access to a large number of apps. Nokia will still have to persuade developers to port their apps (if necessary) and submit them to the NokiaAndroid app store. It will take some time to match the 200,000 apps in the WP store, and the usual chicken and egg problem will apply. How many Android apps are available for Blackberry??
This was my initial concern as well. Apparently it is unfounded. The Nokia X isn't connected
only to the Nokia X app store. It is connected to a number of other app stores and can be connected to anything except Google Play. Yandex was the primary example. It is my understanding that the Nokia X is compatible with everything in the Yandex store, so that is over 100'000 apps (mostly targeting Russian Android users) right there, on day one. This is completely different from Blackberry. For your basic AOSP app, no porting effort is required.
You can actually upload the unmodified AOSP binary to the Nokia X app store, which will ensure you aren't calling any GMS specific APIs, in which case it would immediately report back on any discovered incompatibilities.
Porting is only necessary for GMS enabled apps. Even then, the system is setup so that the same binary can be submitted to both Google Play and the Nokia app store.
Given the above, it would be interesting to know why Nokia/MS didn't cut the price of WP to make it feasible to use on very low cost devices. Is there a fundamental technical reason why WP won't run on hardware similar to the Nokia X (I doubt it)???
WP can run on anything MS wants it to run on. It's just a matter of time, money and effort. Though there is a limit to how low you can go down the hardware ladder while still offering a pleasant user experience. I don't know where that ladder ends for WP. Judging by what SoCs WP8.1 supports, it ends before we reach the hardware the Nokia X runs on, and the Nokia X family is free to go even lower. Side note: I think it would make sense to separate these two brands, that target different audiences and make different trade-offs, even if both ran WP.
Why not give WP away for free, so as to get the price down as low as possible on what can still be considered "capable-enough" hardware? I don't know. I don't think that's a very important question though. All that would do is initiate a race to the bottom that still has little hope of making a dent in the market share equation. Even free WP is no longer enough. At this point, if WP can't offer something revolutionary that has wide consumer appeal and which Google and Apple can't replicate, Android may actually be the more capable weapon in combating Android than WP is. That is my take anyway.