absolutely; and i feel it’s because they’ve really pulled everything together nicely and built a very compelling ecosystem. people tend to define the merits of an ecosystem based largely on app counts, the real value (in my opinion) is in the range of services you get on a platform, and how much you can accomplish utilizing them..

connecting to my microsoft account today, i pretty much have access to services that cover nearly everything i need out of a computing device:

- email (outlook.com)

- messaging (skype)

- cloud storage (skydrive)

- productivity (office)

- collaboration (onenote)

- entertainment (xbox music / xbox video)

- gaming (xbox live)

- social media integration (facebook, twitter, linkedin, ... info pulled-in)

- roaming settings (windows, windows phone)

- roaming favourites (internet explorer)

that makes for a pretty compelling offering to me, and i honestly don’t see any of the others in the market coming close to this.

on the development side, while they’re not quite there yet, they also seem to be the closest in offering an ecosystem where a single application can be accessible on the widest variety of devices and form-factors; i'd say that’s pretty damn cool, and as a consumer i'm looking forward to the experiences that will bring..