Windows Phone should matter to Canon for primarily 2 reasons:
1. Windows Phone is on a growth trajectory (as opposed to Blackberry), and has market share in excess of 10% in many european countries (remember Canon is a global company, not just US); in fact, it outsells iPhone in 26+ markets. Over time, this will grow in the US too as the profile of a Windows Phone user is far more closer to that of an iPhone user than an Android user.
2. More importantly, and over and above the pure smartphone debate, Canon could make a unified app which covers both Windows Phone 8 *and* Windows 8 - this paints a completely different picture in terms of market penetration, where likely the vast majority of canon users are on or will migrate to Windows 8 (or its successors).
The debate is not about which OS is "bigger," but rather whether Canon is fully serving the needs of its customers across the spectrum of their use cases. It is not.
Finally, the investment for an app of this nature is miniscule - around Eur 30k - 50k - from personal experience having apps created for Windows Phone ecosystem. It is not even a blip in Canon's marketing budget. Frankly, Canon is probably hesitant to do this not becuase of the app but rather becuase of the logisical issues relating to updating all the manuals and CDs shipped with product to refer to a Windows app. They will need to do it in the end anyway, as Windows cannot be ignored.
Mark.
