How many times can a company abandon its users and still retain their loyalty? Microsoft may be about to find out.

Microsoft has a history of abandoning its mobile users. It happened when the Windows Phone 7 transition occurred, with Windows Mobile users. Based on the Windows CE kernel, Windows Mobile evolved from the PocketPC OS into a full fledged, if clunky, mobile phone operating system. When Microsoft shipped Windows Phone 7, the company essentially abandoned Windows Mobile users.

There were some very good technical reasons for this, but the upshot was this: Both users and developers had to start over.

Similar abandonment happened with digital music players. Microsoft presented a standard called PlaysForSure, which created interoperability standards between digital music players. Later, Microsoft abruptly dumped support for the standard, abandoning its OEMs for Zune. Zune adhered to the iTunes model, with player and software locked to each other.

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When Google first launched Android, the open-source operating system came with the promise that it could power almost any device. That's created a proverbial cornucopia of mobile devices that consumers have to choose from, but it's also led to the issue of fragmentation -- there are so many devices running different versions of Android with different capabilities that can alter experience.

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