Re: Does anyone think this is a good thing?
They've got successful products in the form of Office, SQL Server, Azure, XBox... does anyone see the utter lack of competition in productivity suites, databases, cloud services and games consoles?
True, but here's where I think this article is to be taken with a pinch of whichever condiment you prefer. If we look at all the products you mention, the dominance of Microsoft came at the cost of somebody else cocking up.
Office was an also-ran in the days of MS-DOS and only because the Perfect applications were such a pile of crap when taken to GUI did Office get a foothold. SQL Server only really gained its place because of the operating environment, the jury is still out on Azure and XBox would have been nothing without the disaster that was the PS3 release, not to mention the Wii U, especially when you consider the dominance of the PS2 and the Wii.
Microsoft have rarely ever produced anything that has succeeded in its own right, especially not in the face of competition from other companies and products, mostly because Microsoft have little original concept in them.
But for this reason you cannot completely write WinPho off. It will only take Apple or Google one slip and they could see themselves going the same way that Nokia did.
The only possible way that WinPho might go otherwise is if iOS and Android continue to dominate so that WinPho will eventually follow Zune into the pages of history, but the trick here is not to write history before it happens.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
