they make money but they lack control, e.g. MS can't decide how software/apps are distributed, what is trusted and what not, how apps are glued together, that's a huge miss, plus the 30% cut Apple and Google apply to payments, MS is missing out on a lot of money, and MS stores pale in comparison. Not that I support this model of distributing software, I prefer the old desktop model of downloading from internet, but don't think MS is making much money just because of patents.
I'm not sure about internal cultural reasons why but it seems like Microsoft just sucks at user experience for the most part, which is the key to the walled garden approach to me. I've never used a Microsoft product (other than mayyyybe the Xbox 360?) and thought, wow, this product is awesome and I'd never willingly switch to something else. You know, that feeling you get when you use something like an iPhone or Google products in the 2000s/early 2010s?
well actually MS knows how to create a walled garden, but just enterprise gardens. They fail at consumer gardens because the leadership doesn’t see money there and are quite shortsighted at seeing it too. Eg see how they lost ads, search, browser, mobile. They’re in games because of Windows and later Azure, so, again they look at it through enterprise glasses.
