You'll see that Microsoft is in the business of selling to hardware manufacturers. This operating system allows them to refresh their lines and bring out something that could genuinely be a major success, even if it is a blast from the past, Convertible Tablet PC's. The Lenovo Yoga (though it's lacking Wacom) is an example of something new and different that will have a chance of seeing sales due to this "awful" OS.
Perhaps someone out there is realizing that putting the same thing onto the market year after year has to come to an end, and when they look at the Tablet market cutting into the laptop market, they want back in.