I don't know the GP's intention, but I'm guessing it's that MS's actual products are all software (Windows, Office, etc) and the allure is that they can be sold on/come packaged with relatively cheap and available computing. Compare to Apple, where they primarily sell hardware, and use software (whether their own or 3rd party) to make that hardware desirable, especially at high price points.
Yeah I don't agree with that assertion either. Microsoft will produce hardware to show the art of the possible with their software. It largely comes out of a situation where the PC/device manufacturers were doing a sh* job of it.
Hardware manufacturers that aren't Microsoft have little reason to take speculative risks that might prove that there's a market for a new configuration of commodity hardware to sell Microsoft’s latest non-commodity software; it's all potential downside with very little potential upside.
