Microsoft 'year away' from cheaper handsets

Link: Microsoft ‘year away’ from single-core phone OS | The Register.

Microsoft’s phones need a baseband processor running the GSM stack, and a separate application processor core running Windows Mobile OS.

The single-core phone operating system makes the device a lot, lot cheaper to produce.  Cheap is what you need when you want to put Windows Mobile OS on the same playing field as Nokia et al.