People follow the nerds for the most part. It's the nerds that made the nexus line popular and casuals who see them on the street with it are usually
I like that phone, what is it? Then follow
The Lumia line gets attention from NOBODY right now. At least appeasing the nerds starts a custom rom thread on xda...then they continue to cook, people look at their phone slike
and maybe start a small movement on that end. Microsoft can spend billions of dollars in marketing, but nobody cares right now. They need to stand out from Apple and Google...they need to stick with what made Windows the most popular desktop OS. Openness with closed/proprietary operating system.
As far as losing revenue? I think getting it into the hands of more people makes more sense than worrying about a small percentage that will root/install a long update from Microsoft/and then find a custom rom or whatever file they need directly from Microsoft.
This is chess, not checkers and Microsoft is thinking small. Blackberry was the same way, I laughed at their attempt to let android apps runs...why not just let nerds dual-boot if they want to.