The war is over? As a former Netscapee you might remember the relevance of Microsoft in terms of Web Browsers before IE4.
That's where Microsoft is now with their mobile OS, and it's nearly exactly the same playbook: developer mindshare and one-way compatibility to make their lousy offer become less lousy.
Given that some XAML-in-UIKit stuff is discussed somewhere else here, they may already work on extending beyond iOS, probably hoping to keep Apple busy with eternal catch-up (since they're said to have cross licensing agreements, patent wars are likely out of the question here).
The key difference is, Microsoft was able to leverage their monopoly in one industry (Desktop) to destroy the competition in another (Browsers, though yes, that phoenix did rise from the ashes)
The war is over because Microsoft no longer has a monopoly they can leverage to do this again.
Microsoft is not, and will not be a force in the mobile phone world for the foreseeable future.
Re: "probably hoping to keep Apple busy with eternal catch-up"
You've got the causation going the wrong direction - Apple doesn't have to catch up to Microsoft any more, it's Microsoft that has to play catch up with Apple.
> The war is over because Microsoft no longer has a monopoly they can leverage to do this again.
They're still a force on the desktop and the Universal App model of Windows 10 will help translating that elsewhere.
> Microsoft is not, and will not be a force in the mobile phone world for the foreseeable future.
WinPhone sales catch up with iOS in some European countries. They have attractive offers at the low end to rival Android in less wealthy regions. I wouldn't discount them yet.
> You've got the causation going the wrong direction - Apple doesn't have to catch up to Microsoft any more, it's Microsoft that has to play catch up with Apple.
For now. Just like they had to with HTML on IE4 and Java for a while. At some point, they built a "better HTML than HTML" (XMLHttpRequest still survives) and a "better Java than Java" (at least they saw it that way, and it was enough of a threat that Sun took the legal route, which both Apple and Google can't easily take in this case).
They need the apps, so they provide enough support to make it work. I suppose that through a mixture of superior tools (MSVC), marketing aid ($$$) and Embrace&Extend (P/Invoke, XAML-in-UIKit) they will try to make those apps work better on Windows than on other platforms, no matter if they're written in C#, Java or ObjC/Swift.
Sound familiar to me. Microsoft is the most dangerous when they're hungry, and they certainly are.
The desktop is increasingly becoming less relevant. It won't go away, but mobile platforms are where the revenue and activity is.
Re: "WinPhone sales catch up with IOS" - That battle is over. It's not even up for debate. There was a reason why Nadella has terminated the Windows "Services and Devices Business." and fired most of the Windows Phone engineers - and that's because Microsoft has been thoroughly and completed defeated by Android and iPhone.
There are going to be lots of places where Windows Phone will still be used, and, in fact, even be a popular choice. But there are also places in the world where Blackberry Phones are still used. But in all the key (and profit generating markets) - Android and Apple have carried the day handily.
By the way - I'm not saying the Microsoft isn't dangerous - they are wicked smart, have tons of cash, and have demonstrated that they are willing to make a significant adjustment to strategy "Devices and Services" to "Mobile first, Cloud First" and fire their CEO to do so.
What I am saying is that Microsoft is no longer in a position to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." as Microsoft no longer has the market power to extend important standards and have others adopt those extensions as people are increasingly less likely to be using one of their products, and, more importantly, are increasingly no longer required to use one of their products to get their job done.
To bring this conversation back to the beginning Microsoft has released a translation/recompilation layer that will let people who have written applications for iOS, quickly recompile them and release them for Windows, without having to write much, if any, new code. The objective is to have people write apps for Windows 10 and iOS using this mechanism, because currently, effectively 0% of people are writing first class apps for windows phone (there are, as always, small exceptions, but windows phone basically gets the dregs).
The problem with this strategy, is that now Microsoft is playing on Apples platform - and this further reduces the incentive for people to write native Windows phone Apps. Effectively, this is Microsoft giving up and saying, "If you won't write apps for our platform, as least we can emulate other ones and run those apps."
That's where Microsoft is now with their mobile OS, and it's nearly exactly the same playbook: developer mindshare and one-way compatibility to make their lousy offer become less lousy.
Given that some XAML-in-UIKit stuff is discussed somewhere else here, they may already work on extending beyond iOS, probably hoping to keep Apple busy with eternal catch-up (since they're said to have cross licensing agreements, patent wars are likely out of the question here).