"If true, this signals a huge shift in WinPhone strategy."
This is a huge shift in their phone strategy, but I don't find it particularly surprising post-Surface-announce.
If you asked me a year ago if Microsoft were more likely to produce their own hybrid laptop/tablet or phone I'd have said phone in a heartbeat and I'd have thought you crazy for even suggesting Microsoft would build a laptop. There are far fewer serious OEMs for them to piss off in the Windows phone market than there are in the laptop space.
I would argue MS needed to disrupt the laptop space more than the phone one. The disparity in quality between Apple and the MS ecosystem is more pronounced in laptopland than with the phones, but that does say more about how bad most PC laptops are.
This is a huge shift in their phone strategy, but I don't find it particularly surprising post-Surface-announce.
If you asked me a year ago if Microsoft were more likely to produce their own hybrid laptop/tablet or phone I'd have said phone in a heartbeat and I'd have thought you crazy for even suggesting Microsoft would build a laptop. There are far fewer serious OEMs for them to piss off in the Windows phone market than there are in the laptop space.