Microsoft just saved Windows Phone. Now stop whining

Analysis It's always jam mañana for Windows Phone owners. In 2011, the "Apollo" update (which became Windows Phone 8.0) would bring new riches. Then it was 8.1. Now it's mid-year before Windows Phone 10 devices can storm the market.

So at the enthusiast end of the market, they're not a happy lot. There hasn't been a headline-grabbing, shiny new flagship to boast about for over a year – and really, for 18 months, since the Lumia 1020.

An American bank has given up because too few people downloaded their app. Even people paid to write about Windows Phone, it seems, have given up using Windows Phone as their main device.

Some hardcore fanbois are starting to sound as whiny and entitled as net neutrality campaigners or copyright reformers: "Give me the moon on a stick – someone else can pay".

The Windows Phone platform certainly has lost momentum and market share has declined. In the UK Kantar reckoned market share was seven per cent, down from a peak of 12 per cent in August 2013. In China, it's down from 3.5 per cent in October 2013 to 0.7 per cent thirteen months later.

Yet in an expanding global market being flooded by low cost Android, Microsoft has managed to stay in the game. Microsoft saved Windows Phone in 2014 by making it royalty free, which encouraged an explosion of new OEMs. Imagine if it hadn't.

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