Windows Metro UI was fantastic. It was leagues better than Android for sure. It was a very different take than iOS as well.
Honestly, it's a huge loss for all of us. I always felt like the U.S. government should have blocked Google from making Android "free." It killed the market for all non-iOS operating systems. We'd have a much richer world if all horizontally integrated OSes had to charge a licensing fee, instead of using a search monopoly to kill competition in other markets (and then using said free OS to further extend their search monopoly).
I also blame Google for killing Blackberry. If Google is blocked from using its search monopoly to make Android free, imagine the world we would have.
Android, for many years, was actively bad, but it was also a free OS that phone companies could grab. And the rest is history.
Nobody stopped Samsung or Microsoft from supporting android apps. Virtualization is pretty much present in all the phones.
The reality is that they all wanted what Apple had - a walled garden to charge exorbitant amounts. Only Google had the foresight to leverage open source (not free).
Blackberry killed Blackberry. Were you alive during that period of time or did you just read about it?
Blackberry was so slow to react to the changing technology and the demand for a (decent)full touch device(the Storm 1-2 was trash).
I guess BlackBerry either had their head up their ass or were afraid of killing off their biggest money maker, a phone with a Keyboard that the industry no longer wanted.
By the time they had a possible candidate ready with the QNX based platform(2012) it was way too late.
Palm and Nokia did have very good OS's at the time and well HP killed Palm and then Microsoft Nokia(those two turkeys)
Android wasn't great but Google iterated very quickly and had the clout to go with it at the time.
Honestly, it's a huge loss for all of us. I always felt like the U.S. government should have blocked Google from making Android "free." It killed the market for all non-iOS operating systems. We'd have a much richer world if all horizontally integrated OSes had to charge a licensing fee, instead of using a search monopoly to kill competition in other markets (and then using said free OS to further extend their search monopoly).
I also blame Google for killing Blackberry. If Google is blocked from using its search monopoly to make Android free, imagine the world we would have.
Android, for many years, was actively bad, but it was also a free OS that phone companies could grab. And the rest is history.