It is a lot easier to switch LLMs than it is to switch smartphone platforms.

But Windows Phone was actually good, like Xune, it was just late, and it was incredibly popular to hate Microsoft at the time.

Additionally, Microsoft didn't really have any advantage in the smart phone space.

Google is already a product the majority of people on the planet use regularly to answer questions.

That seems like a competitive advantage to me.

Was the Windows Phone ever at the frontier tho?

Windows Phone was actually great though, and would've eventually been a major player in the space if Microsoft were stubborn enough to stick with it long enough, like they did with the Xbox.

By his own admission, Gates was extremely distracted at the time by the antitrust cases in Europe, and he let the initiative die.