I remember some of this vaguely. A friend of mine deep in the MS world was showing me some of what was going on, but this "ran promotions" - I dunno. I don't think I'm way out in "non-MS" land - I keep my finger on the pulse of a lot of tech communities. I didn't hear much about this except from a few friends deeply entrenched in MS. Perhaps there wasn't enough of an outreach program?
> Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time.
Given that I've registered multiple times with them to download various SDKs in the past, perhaps... emailing me about what they were doing, because I might have had an interest in being part of that app development push?
Maybe some actual ads on non-MS tech-related websites, or outreach to local non-MS user groups might have helped? As someone who's run multiple local tech groups, and frequented many for years, this "big focus of microsoft" was never a blip on anyone's radar (AFAICR).
> giving away free phones
That's sort of the bare minimum you'd need to do.
I'm reminded a bit about the HP tablets with webOS. They charged $499 (because, IIRC, "that's the price for tablets" - because of iPads), sold for a few weeks, then discontinued. Loads of people picked them up at $150-$200, even with no apps. "Well, we can't win, let's close it all down", after spending $1B+ on acquiring the stuff they're giving up on in the first place.