WP not only raises the commercial bar, but it also enlargens your penis, gives you collegue degrees, gets you ripped in three weeks, and wins you green cards, right?

Suffices to say that MS has never competed on the basis of technology and innovation, most of it's "competing" resumes itself to legal manouvering, backroom deals, and putting the weight of its monopoly to good use. Let those cash hordes do their job, baby, that's how MS "competes".

Technology? There's nothing to compete with in said offering. Last I checked, it only runs on hardware MS selects, so an OEM can't select what hardware to implement it on.

Innovation? MS also has a tight grip on the code, no modifications allowed. What's there to innovate on, should Nokia release the next Lumias in a box of dry feces, so it matches the content inside? That would surely be a novelty..

While the situation of OEMs using others software is precisely the same, you seem to fail to acknowledge it due to being partial to WP. While android provides relative freedom for Oems AND users to modify the software, and provides Oems the freedom to run it in hardware of their choise, WP provides none of those, leaving no differentiation...

Come to think of it, it's the other way around... Android still has room for differentiation... On WP, given that both hardware and software are third-party controlled... That's where one can only compete on price.

But then again, much like WP won against an Android that beat it fair and square (in spite of WP cheating), WP is better "just because".