> It is so painfully obvious and as usual, Microsoft just do not get it
Oh, they get it. They just don't want to admit a multi-billion dollar mistake, and maybe they are still hoping that project will succeed. Plus there's like one person in the company capable of making such a huge decision.
I'd argue the project has already succeeded. Of course this requires understanding success - how much profit does 3% of the US market, and just under 10% internationally amount to? Is more sales than Blackberry success? How about a comparison with Sailfish? It's all relative.
Microsoft's problems are more subtle. Writing universal apps makes little sense, as neat as the tech is, because you can only ever target many PCs and tablets, and a tiny share of phones -- or you could write an HTML/CSS/JS app, target all PCs and all phones. Their stack is solid, and their tooling arguably best in class. Selling it is not so easy.
If you're arguing that Blackberry and Jolla are major players, then Microsoft are killing it. Since the sales of Blackberry and Jolla are rounding errors, though, I'd say that they aren't a good benchmark.
Oh, they get it. They just don't want to admit a multi-billion dollar mistake, and maybe they are still hoping that project will succeed. Plus there's like one person in the company capable of making such a huge decision.