For a lot of reasons.<p>OSX have a <i>profitable</i> section of the market. Is not the size what determine if something is or not a failure, is your POSITION in that market.<p>Having 90% of all the non-paying customer VS 10% of all the paying customers is a different position for a for-profit company. In this case, you truly want the 10%.<p>If WinPhone have a desirable portion of the market, untouched/unchallenged by others, then could be called a success.<p>Le't use a contrived example: vim/emacs have a strong position in a desirable sub-set of the developer mindshare. His position is so strong, that no-IDE to date have be able to destroy it.<p>Then if also is growing, is something powerful.<p>Let's play the (almost incorrect) stereotype of the Apple users: Them are hipster, richer, more creative, select for themselves the gadgets, etc. And pay. This segment, even at %1, is valuable. And if nobody else touch it, then is more than valuable, is unchallenged. Could be say: Is bullet-prof, failure-prof.<p>And then android. Android is for geeks (and the masses that wanna cheap). Have the subset of geeks is desirable. Probably, a lot of android users hate so bad Apple that will never use it. The position of Android in that case is solid.<p>Both have solid position.<p>Windows phone? No have it.