What We’re Not Talking About

With the flurry of blogs and info being spewed out between yesterday and today about the coming of the Google Phone, the battle for mobile device supremacy is getting ready to escalate once again. Google is moving out of software and into the hardware business.

What’s interesting to me is not that we have two companies ( Google and Apple ) bashing each others skulls in on a daily basis, but rather there is a third that is conspicuously absent. Has anyone read any articles or reviews of the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile offerings lately? If you have, you had to dig to find them. Microsoft is not only not in the game, they are not even on the sidelines. They are watching from their luxury box as the battle ensues.

Whenever you hear or talk about Microsoft, someone will inevitably say something like “But they have all that cash, they will be back.” I used to think that, but I am not so sure anymore. If the pundits are right, and if we are all using our mobile devices as our primary means of communication in 3-5 years, then shouldn’t we be seeing something from Microsoft now? Do we really expect that they have a Steve Jobs type of guy waiting in the wings that can deliver the right product to put them back on the map? It’s clearly not Ballmer.

Microsoft has no history of any kind of success in the consumer device space, save the XBox. Zune was awful, and Windows Mobile is just as bad.

Microsoft used to be the enemy. They were hated by many for their monopolistic, predatory ways of doing business. Now, they are not even a part of the conversation. I would take being hated and relevant over being relegated to obscurity any day.