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First off it's good to hear an executive at MS actually admit they made mistakes. The sad part is the mistakes admitted to have been pointed out many times before now, and just now they seem to be getting it.
2nd, he indicates they've been working on changes for some time now, but then goes on to say it's going to be 12-18 months more before we see anything. In tech terms that's too long. Unless they are doing a giant leapfrog of the market, things they are planning today will be old news by the time it gets released.
I like that he indicates they are going to be working more closely with manufacturers, but note that there isn't any indication of discussions with carriers to stop stripping features from the devices or to get them to stop preventing OS upgrades in a prompt manner. In the US, this will continue to be an obstacle to success.
For me to get back on the bandwagon they are going to have to deliver a premium experience, that isn't compromised because they are concerned that manufacturer XYZ doesn't want to spend the $ on memory, screen real estate, etc. They need to put strict hardware requirements in place, at least for a segment of the market. For example if I buy a fancy new phone with a VGA scree, the core OS and programs all need to be VGA, not pixel doubled - the OEM has to make sure the screen is big and easy to use, they have to enable hardware graphics acceleration, etc. In other words, Microsoft needs to ensure the entire experience is a good one, not just that their software runs on 10 million different devices.
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