What it brings to the table is largely irrelevant; consumers don't make their phone purchasing decisions based on these one-liner cliches that the grandparent lays out. The important question is: what does Windows Phone bring to the carriers (the people who sell the phones).
It's a different world altogether. When people think of paying for a mobile. They are by default thinking of paying for the hardware. They don't care, about what runs inside. When people buy an iPhone they are automatically imagining an awesome form factor an awesome UI. By default shipped to them.
So now here is the problem, If HTC ships a phone, will it be an 'HTC phone' or a 'Windows phone'? Now you see there is a problem there. People have trouble imagining the term 'HTC phone running windows'. They understand only single branding. Its either Windows phone or a HTC phone. That's the same thing as during the PC era, for an ordinary user it was always 'I have a Dell computer' or 'I have a Toshiba', It was never a 'Windows computer'.
That is what dug MS's grave here.
When people go to buy televisions, mp3 players or even cars. They don't care who is writing the software/shipping the engine for the car. They talk about manufacturers like - 'Is this toyota car good?' or 'Is this Panasonic TV good', even though Sony may probably be supplying the OEM components to Panasonic.
So people have a lot of trouble imagining 'Windows Phone'.
Android is different here, because Google main business is not selling Android. They sell a totally different thing for which Android is an enabler. So the branding problem doesn't arise there.
So people don't have any reason to consider 'Windows phone' special. Heck they don't understand what a windows phone is basically, Just like how I and you don't care about what engine is built into our cars, or who supplies the filament inside the electric bulb.
To me I can only imagine the electric bulb as a whole, I don't really have the time, money or the resources to go researching for the quality of filaments used inside and who manufactures them. I imagine the bulb as a whole, so the user does the same thing when buying a mobile. Its a whole mobile not a specific component running inside it. And from the direction of view, there is nothing special about windows on manufacturer X.
