Of course, there's relatively little that truly takes advantage of that set up, and making the user experience more pleasant would make a huge difference, but android understands mouse and keyboard input just fine. Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications, and there are relatively few of them at present.
But that is going to soon change as MS is working with Intel to launch Intel powered phones (x86). [1]
Regardless of whether Windows phone succeeds or not, I believe the path they are taking will eventually be where all the OSes will end up. The saying "The best camera is the one that is with you" may hold true for computers in the future.
Imagine hotels & coffee shops offering a dock for rooms/tables and the only thing you need is your phone. Plug it in and voila!, your personalized desktop with all its settings and data. This might even be secure, cost effective and more efficient method for portable desktop.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-launching-intel-pow...
The second leg of UWP's 'write a single app and have it go everywhere' was mobile. We've all seen how that's been going.
The final (and biggest/main) leg is traditional Windows. They whiffed badly with the Windows RT devices. Now all the tablets are running the full-blown OS. That means they all run Win32 apps.
Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?
All the new APIs since Windows 8 are only available in WinRT.
For example, the upgrade path to MFC is XAML, which is only available for WinRT applications.
From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily marketed, though none in the last few years, because its something users keep not really wanting in practice, even if they conceptually like the idea in the abstract.
Plus, a substantial fraction of the price and size of a "second computing device" that's larger than your phone is going to be the display, so docking doesn't really solve much of anything (especially when the devices are all cloud connected.) There's zero friction moving between by Android phone and my 12" tablet -- with BT keyboard and, if I felt like using one, BT mouse. And I could use the BT keyboard and mouse with the phone itself, if I wanted to. Either device could connect to an external monitor via HDMI with an inexpensive adaptor (and either can cast its display via Google Cast.)
What, in practical terms, does docking solve?
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=windows+launcher&c=ap...
