Microsoft was already scamming Android phone manufacturers out of license fees or patent settlements or "vigorish", whichever term you like. CM may have threatened to have an effect on that stream, but it also offered a way to compete with Android (and in a hurtful parasitic way, MS's favorite mode) when WM's market share was obviously foundering.
MS bobbled as usual and lost the moment, if it ever had a notion of the potential in the first place. I remember thinking it might turn interesting, but of course it didn't. MS doesn't even know which game it's playing. And everyone else doesn't understand the game Google is playing until they're on to the next one. Which won't last forever, but right now is amusing in a black humor sort of way.
There is still time to make CM into something higher. If a consumer could "update" their phone easily to CM via a simple app or storefront, it included its own app-land and cloud space so no gmail account required or wanted, and the updates were kept up, it might gain ground, esp if tech-friends recommended it and supported it a bit. Which would be more support than mainstream Android offers. They could also license it so that Google wouldn't be able to directly use the code, requiring them to invest in copying each innovation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
