I think you guys should get out of your shoes for once and try to look at the world with non-geek eyes. Normal people actually think that iPhone is the best, followed by Android. Normal people now think, after more than a year being laughed at by everyone, that Symbian is crap. Normal people now see the ads about Lumia and that little big name in the ads, "Microsoft", and think it's wow. We geeks know that WP7 still lacks a shitload of functionalities, that it's as close as iOS, and all the other shortcomings, normal people don't and just remain impressed by the UI and the "Microsoft" brand behind it. Moreover, a lot of devs are turning to this OS.
It certainly had a very slow start, but it's about to spring, imo. It certainly is better than Bada, not in the numbers (Bada sold much more because it's on cheap phones) but in quality, potential (= devs in the ecosystem) and future updates.
This is my view, I might be wrong, but for sure normal people, who are 99% out there, don't know **** about Maemo, Harmattan or other stuff, and have been brainwashed into thinking that Symbian stinks. So yeah, WP7 is the third of the 3 major OSes.