@ Look_Around_You

"If they were in the motor making business, then it makes perfect sense. Why would they spend money they dont have to on making a full car, when GM (ugh) or Ford is willing to do that just to have their motor running it?"

I didn't realize Microsoft was so strapped for cash these days. The reason Ferrari wouldn't want GM and Ford building cars for them is that they make crappy cars by comparison, which in turn would hurt the perception of their own brand. I would say it's even worse in Microsoft's case in that there are some decent phones out there running WM but everyone sees them as crappy because WM (currently) sucks.

@simon

Well, Ferrari's a pretty poor analogy for Microsoft too, if you want to split hairs ;)

"With so many phones being sold, a company cannot expect to have the vast majority of that market if they do both the phone and the software, something will suffer because the cost will be too high to maintain both. If you allow others to spend the money on the hardware, and you do the software, then you have a better chance of being on top."

Also incoherent nonsense. The amount a company spends to develop a phone only affects their profitability, not the chance of success in the market. If anything, Microsoft's approach makes it harder to end up on top, a lesson they clearly learned in the mp3 player market. If you're only developing software and relying on others to develop hardware, you are now at the mercy of those other companies to deliver decent products. It's kind of like Ferrari saying, "since there are so many cars being sold, we're just going to develop engines and let GM and Ford build the cars." You don't have a better chance of being on top, you now have a better chance of ending up with a shitty product, with no power to control it.

"when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that's sold by somebody who doesn't make their own phone."

Really? Because your software (on phones) is getting less popular while the number of smartphones sold is increasing dramatically. Funny how his tune has changed since claiming that there was no chance the iPhone would ever get any decent market share. I guess now the plan is to wait until all phones sold are smartphones and then somehow get all the handset manufacturers to switch from Symbian, Android, and WebOS back to WM. And hope that people stop buying iPhones in droves. Good luck there sparky.

RTFPR!

"Apple® today announced that it has sold over one million iPhone(TM) 3GS models through Sunday, June 21, the third day after its launch."

- Pasted from my iPhone

Note to self: when hitting reply, don't accidentally page back.

@ UnixSystemsEngineer

16GB of storage?
Ability to use data and voice connection simultaneously?
Flashlight?
Farting?

What is that junk all around the edges?

Oh, it's Windows Mobile.

I wonder if the dozens of early adopters will be demanding a refund.

It's over $100 now. I guess his point was what a screaming buy AAPL was at the bell today.