There's almost no value add in a custom kernel from a customer perspective. MS don't so much sell Windows as Office, Exchange etc. These are whole platforms in and of themselves. Android is flexible enough to enable MS service clients to sit on top of it and act as if they're built in to the system, while getting easy portability for all the existing Android developers. (This is the point I think most objectors underestimate, since Android is a giant mess, but has an inspired way for plugging apps together at runtime).
Windows as a standalone product is essentially dead, but selling it as part of a system for running Outlook, Exchange and Excel is not and won't be for a long while.
> There's almost no value add in a custom kernel from a customer perspective. MS don't so much sell Windows as Office, Exchange etc.
True, the OS kernel is an enabler not a feature.
> Windows as a standalone product is essentially dead
And on the server world it's a platform for IIS servers, SQL servers, and azure clouds.
Yes, a company that does this could decide to use someone else's OS kernel to enable all that. The original article that I linked to in grandparent comment explains why that would be a dangerous decision and is not going to happen.
I'm afraid your link merely shows the misguided point-of-view leading to the MS malaise.
Look at your examples for server stuff: it would make no difference to the end user if those were running on Windows or not. IIS gets value from ease of .net application deployment, SQL server from playing well with .net, and Azure can deploy Linux because that department can't afford not to be in the embrace/extending mode.
From an MS point of view making the OS might make these things easier to deploy, but just because you're good at doing something doesn't mean other people are going to keep paying you to do it, and so it will be with Windows. MS are going to end up disadvantaging themselves given they have to duplicate a lot of work going on in the open source community.
If you use Chrome in Metro mode on a Win8 machine you'll see the extent to which Google are outplaying MS, as it apes the Chrome OS experience completely. Google are leveraging the Windows user base to reduce friction to them eventually moving to Chrome OS.
Look at your examples for server stuff: it would make no difference to the end user if those were running on Windows or not. IIS gets value from ease of .net application deployment, SQL server from playing well with .net
IIS also gets value from Windows account permissions integration, from Computer Manager integration and MS Best practises Analyser, from PowerShell and VBScript and Visual studio integration, from Windows certificate services integration, blah blah.
The "Windows" benefit is integration, Microsoft products aren't standalone.
What benefit rewriting everything for Linux? Except alienating a huge chunk of Linux-ambivalent administrators.
> I'm afraid your link merely shows the misguided point-of-view
I agree that it is MS's point of view on this topic. We're going to have to disagree that it's "misguided". IMHO Jeff Atwood was right on the mark in that essay, and it applies to this case.
Will it be enough for MS and for Windows Phone in particular? I don't claim to know. Would swapping over to android help? Unlikely, once you factor in the loss of face involved. Are others like Google doing it better? Probably.
Windows as a standalone product is essentially dead, but selling it as part of a system for running Outlook, Exchange and Excel is not and won't be for a long while.