The difference is that iOS was clearly designed to wow the consumer. It was shiny, it offered the promise of full-scale web browsing and the established media ecosystem. It was not a power tool. (remember the first versions didn't even offer third-party apps).

Windows CE/Mobile was heavily shaped by the corporate presence. People didn't queue up at midnight at Best Buy to buy CE devices, they were sent down from IT and ran a handful of bespoke line-of-business apps. People associated them with big clunky barcode scanner devices, not sleek hi-fi media players. It had all the consumer charm of a corporate lanyard and ID badge.

I'm not sure they could have respun the existing product to get that to "sexy consumer facing item" without a huge rework anyway. And the rework was excellent-- I liked Windows Phone enough to own 3 (a Lumia 1020, then replacing it with a 530 after the screen broke, and a bargain 640 as a modest upgrade) The experience was smooth even on the bottom-range device and it felt more holistically designed than contemporary Android.