the difference between WP7 (MS) and all the other "potential" platforms is that WP7 has shown it's cards. People love it. People want it. Apps Store is surging full speed ahead. It's going to deliver on promise.
WebOS-- never really showed us what "new and exciting" feature it has. In fact, people were just *hoping* that it would be faster with the newer processor, and the demo's we've seen with the Touchpad hasn't really shown us the "speed". So then we're back to "what potential does WebOS has?" is it the huge homebrew developers? is it the build quality? the speed? what is it? I think a lot of people just KNOW that WebOS has potential, but don't know where to put that seemingly unattainable goal.
What about QNX? is the ONLY thing that's lacking is the App store? the Email client? what's the potential there? What else is lacking from QNX? Is it laggy? slow?
I know one thing: MS's WP7 potential is the multi-tasking, messenger/facebook chat integration, turn by turn navigation, --- mango. And it's coming. It's fast, smooth, and will give a serious competition to its competitors. Apps are growing, and it's growing fast. more than 15k Apps in just 9 months, I think potential for this platform is coming fast!
So what is potential? What we would like to see in a phone? what feature it has? polish? speed? animation? what kind of goals do we want WebOS to hit? QNX? Is there something else we would like Microsoft to do?