I'm surprised most of the tech blogs I've read or skimmed over never really criticized WP7 for no-show features that should have been standard on a 1.0 release and like to praise the stark blue GUI, which really turns off a lot of people in the consumer market who aren't "professionals". Things like copy/paste, multitasking, vampire data and power drain, non-working microSD cards or lack of a slot, unexciting app base, etc. In fact, coming from WinMo, they are getting a slap on the wrist for most shortcomings. This is microsoft, the biggest OS company in the world. From windows ce to winmo1-6, they are far from newbies, and WP7 was rumored to be in develop for how long? I've seen more flak thrown at Bada, Symbian, Android, etc. who really all have more legitimate reasons to be behind during their initial release (Symbian has a whole legacy fleet to account for) so it is more than disappointing that WP7 is starting out with baby steps like the rest even though its been cooking for so long.
The other problem is because all the WP7 launch devices have been largely identical, there is very little to differentiate between them. If WP7 is aiming for standards and tight hardware control and design, I don't see the point in having companies like Samsung, LG, or HTC flesh out a lateral-only spanning handset fleet with no bulletpoints on any of them. Are they aiming at consumers, or business? Because businesses want uniformity like what they have with HP/Palm or RIM devices, or even the iPhone. And consumers want pizazz, and pizazz is definitely not how I would describe a WP7 phone.
Only 2 million WP7 phones COMBINED from ALL the manufacturers were SHIPPED not sold last quarter. This coming after news that MS has already committed billions in marketing and developing the phone. I definitely haven't seem any commercials or real buzz beyond the initial weeks surrounding the November release. For comparison's sake, the samsung wave, the first Bada phone, had already sold over a million units by itself in the two months after release. Bada, for those not in the know, is only really a side-project aimed at cheap smartphones for developing countries and comes with an almost non-existent marketing department and probably small development team in comparison to something like WP7. People bought the Wave because of the colorful graphics, the unique look and size, and the screen. Oh, and it already had copy/paste! I don't deny that WP7 is probably the superior OS compared to Bada (it better be with all the time and money), but if no consumer wants your spartan phones or spartan UI, you won't succeed in the long run.