[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]Memmadmax: not so much as just being forced (Even Win7 includes a Win2000 skin) - but BAD design of metro and the complete cluster-F of a mess to use it.I thought that 7.8 was an upgrade only... who would BUILD a new 7.8 phone when WP7 is a dead market? at&t sells the Nokia 820 for $50 on contract... and its better than any WP7 device on the market.[/citation]There are many places that do not offer subsidized phones. Some of these places have much lower incomes, and you can't expect them to plunk down the equivalent of hundreds of dollars. So the only smartphone they might be able to afford is going to be very low-spec. It just so happens that WP7.x is very fast and efficient, and actually runs pretty damn well on them on them even though these ultra-budget devices are often equipped with 800Mhz single-core CPUs. There's no way in hell a heavier OS like Android or even WP8 (which is still very fast but more demanding than 7.8) would provide the same experience.
Anyway, it doesn't really fragment things like people think it does. If you make a WP7 app, it will probably run out of the box on WP8. But regardless, their dev tools make it easy to build apps that run across multiple platforms - WP7, WP8, WinRT, Win8. One of Microsoft's strong points is their developer support and tools.