One of the videos I think tells us a lot about change at Microsoft and their mobile strategy is this little digital life video;
Microsoft products are everywhere in this vision. Instant Messaging, phone, maps and location, music, directions etc etc.
The vision was not imaginary because these were working consumer facing products.
As you watch this old looking world you have sense that each product is now done by Apple and Google in an integrated ecosystem whereas Microsoft managed to evolve every item in the list to something that doesn’t work as an ecosystem.
Microsoft clearly had a vision of mobile and ecosystems blending together and then made a total mess of all of them.