They didn't miss out on mobile. They had a strong mobile system with more than 10% market share in Europe but they only focused on the US market where it was not successful. Then they killed the platform with the god awful Windows 10 Mobile. The biggest enemy of Windows Phone was Microsoft themselves.
I actually really liked Windows Phone, but it's obvious why it didn't take off - iPhone captured all of the "sheep" consumers (the ones that just want what everyone else has) successfully (and still owns them somehow), and Android captured all the rest (which tend to be smaller target groups). The largest target was probably price point, but cheap androids sucked so much, it just created more Apple users.
By the time WP came around, this was already been done. Phones were costing near a $1000 and a 2 year contract, and opinions have been made. No real amount of people was going to risk a windows phone when you'd have to fork over that much money and that much of a contract term.
> iPhone captured all of the "sheep" consumers (the ones that just want what everyone else has) successfully (and still owns them somehow),
This is not a good take. Android was a highly fractured ecosystem that didn't really have good unified product experience until Nexus and Galaxy S3 rolled around. You don't go to a $1000 phone because a $100 phone sucks.
>The largest target was probably price point, but cheap androids sucked so much, it just created more Apple users
Doesn't this statement contradicts itself? Nobody buys an iPhone because cheap Android phones suck(ed) - you would have to shell over ~10 times the money. Android still dominates the European market (~65 % market share).
Good Windows Phone were 120 to 250 € and WP8 was optimized for low-end hardware so that was no problem. You got a cheap phone without an annoying expensive locked-in contract. I saw a lot of people using a Windows Phone exactly ten years ago. I had a brand new Lumia 535 myself and only paid 130 €.
No, it doesn't. Android on cheaper devices sucked so hard, that people decided forking the money for an iPhone that just works was now worth it if they could afford it. Paying $100 for a POS isn't helpful to budget conscious customers. If they couldn't afford it, they maybe still found a way to via various forms of financing.
Windows Phone came too late to dispel this problem. I still run into people who remember their first and only Android and switched to Apple and never looked back. WP never had a chance to wins those customers.
