I think many .NET fans/developers will want to develop for WP7, because it's so easy to port their applications to it.
For the end user, I have no idea. I do not like an animated tiles desktop. Too cluttered, and at the same time too empty (you can have only a few applications visible at once, rather than tens of smaller icons).
I think I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft will not be using .Net for windows8 or wp8.
Lots of people buy according to the hype, to the desire of novelty, to word of mouth from friends and colleagues, to aesthetics and to the contrasting forces that are feeling different from others and feeling part of a homogeneous group. This to answer to the OP.
So, many will buy WP once available. Only a minority will base their purchase on some kind of rationality.
Here in this forum instead this minority is majority, hence comes all the opposition to Elop, to Microsoft, to Google, whatever.
Just my 2 eurocents.
I bought one just to try it out. Honestly with the Nodo update its crap. It has a very beautiful UI, but apart from that I don't see it replacing my N900 anytime soon.
The only plus side I could say is the Zune Music services (the $15/month for unlimited songs).
I bought a WP7 because its fun to use. My N900 frustrated me more and more and apps didn't get better UIs although qt has the power. Sorry, but UIs like this are not appealing to the masses: http://meego.de/apps/maemo/sonstige-...euro-2012.html
And there are plenty of them in the N900 universe. They work, but deliver a horrible user experience.
Thanks all for the replies. I realise it's a loaded question round here, but I do genuinely want to understand the answer, if only so I can know why Nokia has not only shot itself in the foot but also pretended that all the cool kids will want holes in their feet too.
Keep in mind that the average user is not someone on here. When joe average walks into a phone provider's store and is already not sold on buying an iPhone, they are going to get a salesman-pitch on phones. When they hear a phone runs Windows, and they use Windows at home... blammo huge selling point.
obviously it's not. Otherwise they wouldn't be a total failure for a year now. It's a nice little software but it delivers nothing more than S40 on better hardware. Or samsungs touchiz (the S8000 Jet software, it even had backrounding).
There are no native apps, the upside is that all apps look similar (and nice IMO) but you'll never see fennec or opera mobile, or RaceChrono on it unless they allow native apps. For now it's just a phone that can run silverlight. BTW, maybe we can compile moonlight and run them on the N900 too.