Last time I tried (HTC 8S) you needed an outlook account to mass transfer contacts from one phone to another (bluetooth was limited, vcf not allowed). Background syncing and 'cloud' features were aggressively pushed on users. Microsoft is no different from Google.
I do agree that the account thing is pushed too much in many cases.
My point was that having an ID has too many advantages to both the phone user and the OS company (not that those two sets of advantages have a bigger intersection...) that it's hard to see their presence/usage in smart phones not happening.
