This is good news!
The only major thing that the WP environment is missing is the rich developer support that iOS and Android have nurtured over the years. And really, who can blame the developers? WP simply has no market share. The reasons for this is simple;
1) WinMo users moved to the much more gadgitey Android platform than the overly simplified WP7
2) When WP7 first came out it was way behind the times, and by the time WP7.5 came out a lot of potential buyers (myself included) were waiting for WP8 to come out in a few months.
3) While the WP8 lineup is pretty nice, and there are no really 'bad' WP8 devices on the market, they are all essentially the same guts with a different case and screen, which puts them all in a very similar performance and price bracket. Compare that to the Android market where you can go in and say 'I want these features' and there is probably an android device that has that feature set somewhere. Also, stupid moves like putting SD card slots in base model phones, but not on the high end phones is a real head scratcher that really needs to go away, and is my only substantial complaint about my Lumia 920 (though it has not been as bad as I feared it would be).
4) while high end WP8 devices are not as expensive as high end Android or iOS devices, there are still no really 'cheap' WP8 devices either. That being said, the $100 I paid with contract is easy to swallow for what I got, but if my phone were to break outside of warranty but before my contract was up then I would not purchase another WP8 device to tide me over until I get another discount phone, I would be forced to switch to a cheap Android simply because it would be affordable to get an off contract $200 Android phone to hold me over for a few months rather than buying another $400+ WP8 device.
5) While it is kinda sad, we need to be honest. Most Android phones are trash. Yes, the SGS3, and other high end phones are freaking sweet, but the bulk of smartphone users are simply getting whatever comes free with contract, or they are getting a cheaper prepaid option and cannot afford something more powerful than a $150 'phone with a smartphone OS, but is not quite fast enough to get the smartphone expierence'. MS has been deathly afraid of the cheap market, and has been much more concerned about keeping all WP8 devices as pretty nice machines, and avoiding the discount market because it might 'hurt the brand'. The argument has been that if you want a cheap WP device, then you go get a WP7.5 or 7.8 device, but people want cheap new phones, they do not want old (or seemingly old) devices no matter what the price is. This is a huge market that would love the simplicity of WP8, and they have been very short sighted to not persue it yet.
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