I used to work in Nokia's developer relations group. For a lot of developers, the following requirements are all hurdles that make WP more trouble than its worth:

- Learn a new language (C# is awesome but odds are the dev you are talking to already knows Java or ObjC. Telling an Android dev to learn C# is more work than telling him/her to tweak his/her Android app)

- Get Windows (a huge number of mobile devs are on MacBooks. Getting Windows costs some combination of time, money, and precious SSD space)

- Get Windows 8 (a lot people who are on Windows are on Windows 7 and have no desire to go to Windows 8)

bottom line: telling devs to tweak their Android apps for some kind of "MSMS" over GMS would represent a whole lot of lower barriers to entry.

Possibly, but just saying learn C# so you can program for Windows Phone is the wrong selling point. It should be learn C# so you can develop native-quality apps for all mobile platforms. Microsoft should completely embrace Xamarin. That would solve the OSX problem as well, as developers could use whatever OS and IDE they prefer.

Windows is on more than 90% of PCs (including a lot of Macs), Visual Studio is one of the most popular development environments, and C# is one of the most sought-after skills in the job market. And as others have noted, Xamarin for Visual Studio lets you develop for iOS and Android as well. https://xamarin.com/visual-studio

Also, C# isn't compulsory because you can develop in HTML5 instead.

So, it might be impossible to get people who specialize in iOS apps to develop for WP8, but it should be possible to grow a comparable ecosystem. And making apps run on both W8 and WP8 would be a good move in that direction.

The short term view may be bleak but the future is uncertain, and the long term _could_ look different.

Removing these barriers doesn't actually require forking Android, though. For example they could create a Java language projection for WinRT alongside the C++, .net and JavaScript ones. Actually just making the existing JavaScript stuff from Windows 8 available on WP might help a lot.

Amazon solved the lack of Google Play problem but their circumstances were very different.. Microsoft could technically do the same and they might have better app situation. Developer's problem with WP is that it is yet another platform to port their app to without any guarantee of returns given the platform's numbers. If MSFT went with their own Android store developers would just need minor changes to their Play Store version to gain yet another entry point. If it doesn't work out no big deal.

Problem is just going Android without great differentiation is almost a guaranteed failure for Microsoft. And at this stage in the game coming up with great differentiation is going to be very hard. But if they do something like put out great Nokia handset with great camera, guaranteed OS updates, a tiles based launcher an thriving alternate app store, more focus on privacy of the user and great Microsoft services and apps - that could work well. I am not sure about the practicaility of all that and if it will mean significantly more revenue for Microsoft. Besides, by all accounts Microsoft is still badly bullyish on the Windows everywhere strategy so to change course with Ballmer being the biggest share holder and Gates doing product advisor role it's just not easy. On top of that the market is just too irrational and hyper competitive for them to feel confident about doing something this drastic.

I'm running cyanogenmod without google and many of the apps out there rely on google apis without telling you that they do so (a significant chunk of the apps available on aptoide). Also with some phones that I've had it's been basically impossible to get a gps fix without enabling the 'allow google to track me' option, not that that is particularly relevant, but it is pretty annoying...