Nope, Palm unlike Microsoft did not have other revenue streams to fall back on.
What killed Palm were a collective number of factors, carriers’ pulling out of deals last minute is one of them and these are extremely costly especially when there is nothing to massage the blow.
Since there is no UWP without phones, Windows Mobile will still continue whether it becomes a thriving platform or a nascent platform used be a people who fall into in my opinion - two camps.
a) Dislike Android and IOS
b) People who have used various mobile o/s’s, have tinkered in the past with ROMs and have decided to settle for a single o/s once and for all.
What could possible inject some life into this the ROM flashing scene, but that alone will bring some problems which is a given. Generally speaking you cannot have all pros and no cons.
There is no such thing as a one side coin.
Right now this how I see it, Windows Mobile 10 was designed to draw in users who were used to the horrible UX elements on IOS and Android; as such there are a lot of UX inconsistencies.
BUT on the flipside combined with other factors WP growth has shrunk and that is all down to perspective -
No Users = No Developers = No Apps = No Users = No Developers = No Apps - It's a vicious cycle this what the Tech media keep looping back and forth.
However you can't blame them for everything, Microsoft have provided them with tonnes excuses to use and spin to their liking.
Lastly the platform agnostic approach will always cannibalize sales, if you think purely just because people will use Microsoft services on their IOS devices therefore as a result will always get a Windows tablet and a windows phone later on?
Wrong, that is just being extremely naive.
There will always be some people who wish to do so to have a cohesive experience but the conversion rate will not be 100%.
As you need to take in to other factors into consideration:
1) Family members - example: If all your family members use face time and you’re stuck on Skype, which they refuse to use - what do you do?
2) Friends - same as above
3) Gadgets & electronics bought - for example your new Sonos system is not compatible with your phone - what do you do?
4) Time and money spent on apps - apps / progressed cannot be transferred for those who do not utilise cloud saves - has anyone tried setting their icloud account as thier ms account?
Plus if you combine the above with everyone's confirmation bias, you have another situation entirely.
The solution imo:
1) + 2) Offer a superior solution to face time, they could have incorporated Skype into rooms in my opinion.
3) Here this where the bridges and UWP platform comes into play
4)This one is tricky, as that it would require pretty much all Devs supporting cloud sync the way round that would be offer to facilitate this at no extra cost to the developers (Onedrive) and offer partner service hooks so they can use the cloud storage platform of their choice.
In regards to the confirmation bias, there is no point going there - swimming in an ice bucket across the ocean would be more fruitful. :evil:
Personally It is beginning to look like to me we may get Red Stone 1 not the current retail build for WP8.1 as it would be more polished and much more refined.
However we will see what happens in February 2016.
Hmm... Just re-read my post and it does sound rather negative.. Oops.
Here's a random, just to lighten up the sombre mood :winktongue: