Microsoft Smartphone Smarting from Problems

Business 2.0 has a Matthew Maier article up called Microsoft's Smartphone Program Isn't Very, which nicely details all of the problems Microsoft has been having of late getting traction with their Smartphone 2002 platform.

One paragraph in the article mentioned T-Mobile's May 16 announcement that they would cancel their MS Smartphone release, which was "clarified" by T-Mobile and Microsoft just a day later:

T-Mobile recently announced that it would postpone plans to release a Smartphone-based device being developed by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC until the carrier could iron out some hardware and software conflicts. While incompatibilities between a phone and its operating system are not unheard of, especially with advanced devices like smartphones, the most recent crop comes at an inopportune time for Microsoft, which is desperately seeking more carriers willing to offer its products.

As I read this last night, I started to wonder if this announcement was actually a tactical political move by T-Mobile to get Microsoft's attention and "encourage" them to fix problems they may not have been intending to deal with. I really missed this back in May if so. This would certainly explain the quick "clarification" the very next day. Hmmm.

I do find it interesting that Microsoft is having such a hard time penetrating the smartphone market, but I don't expect them to be delayed too much longer. Why? Well, since they can dump oodles of cash into the Smartphone 2002 platform with no hope of profitable results whatsoever, it's pretty predictable -- this is exactly what they're already doing with Pocket PC platform.