The significance of andromeda is as a software testbed for future markets. Much as windows phone has been used as a testbed for andromeda.
Let me explain. So we have this technology called graphene flexible OLED screens. Microsoft and Samsung actually share a patent, but there are some variations. More or less its a sheet of plastic looking stuff, that is durable enough that it can be made into a bullet shielding, and yet flexes like a thin peice of plastic.
But it's a screen. A bright touch screen, to be specific. It can be used to build phones that scroll out from a cylinder, or tablets that fold neatly into two or three sections without any screen crease.
The issue is, it's too expensive to make. Or more specifically, graphene is expensive to make. Graphene is also the key to a range of future technologies ranging from water filtration and desalination, to chemical manufacture, to nano-computing. So its really really important.
So, you see, one day, the candybar smartphone will be dead. Most likely it will be entirely replaced by two techs 1) AR glasses ala the HoloLens but in a smaller form factor 2) folding tablets, like the ones on westworld.
So this is where MSFT gets really smart. They want to have their OS ready, so that it can run on both, scaled perfectly for the larger screens it provides, but scalable to a single screen, and ready for multiple forms of input.
So they develop the HoloLens, and andromeda. Not because they need or want to sell anything. But because they want the development of the OS to be perfect, and the development community behind it, as soon as either product is ready for its first market - enterprise (businesses always push a product when its expensive - they can afford it, and they don't mind more limited ecosystems because they do in house programming).
If MSFT can have windows ready for both form factors, by the time business is really hyped for AR and folding screens - it will then have the momentum to capture more of the consumer market, potentially all of it.
The only stone in MSFTs soup, is that apple appears to be playing a similar long game. They've developed AR, rumours abound about a HoloLens competitor, and they also plan to merge ios and osx - ios already being more "big screen" than android due to the ipad. Of course apple still has lots of obstacles - osx isn't touch orientated at all, none of the software UIs are touch orientated, and nothing on osx is designed to be adaptive the way it is on a mobile OS. They probably have a lot more work to do than MSFT, but at least they are still in the game so to speak.
But in this longer term game, android is left in the dust. Basically it's entire ecosystem is designed for touch on a small screen. It doesn't scale to AR, it doesn't scale to tablets or larger screens.
Fushia is miles off, and chrome doesn't have the legs to push larger UIs for android apps.
Googles VR/AR platform suffers even more from scalability issues, than Windows legacy apps ever did, and it's adoption ratres for AR are very low.
And that is why a) its not a phone, it's an early beta for the folding tablet that will replace phones b) it doesn't really matter whether its a commercial success. The move isn't about short term sales, its about long term market dominance.
So no, I wouldn't call andromeda a phone. It's a new catergory of device, that when graphene is made cheaper, is intended to entirely replace phones, with the aid of glasses sized AR HoloLens progeny.
When people have a bigger screen in their pocket, one that can't crack, and they have glasses on their head, that project theatre sized screens at will - nobody will want a candybar. It'll be as attractive to the masses as a feature phone is today.
And that is the future msft and apple are planning for. You see they have both lived through pivots. MSFT through the rise of the smartphone, and apple through it's own near closure of its desktop failure days, and it's pivot to the ipod, and then iPhone. They are both acutely aware, unlike google, that the tech market goes through radical evolutions that make past successes redundant.
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