Microsoft and Motorola's marriage of convenience

We don't care much for all that inside baseball stuff, but over at ChicagoBusiness.com, Julie Johnson examines the marriage of convenience that is the recent Motorola/Microsoft partnership, speculating that Motorola is using Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system for smartphones to maintain its position in the market until its own Linux-based OS is ready, while Microsoft is just happy to have a major manufacturer building phones that run its software:

Motorola needed Microsoft because its own operating software wasn't ready and it couldn't afford to miss the
market shift to smart phones. Microsoft needed Motorola as a foothold in the wireless market, a key new growth front
for the company.The partnership gives Microsoft a chance to dominate wireless software the way it does the personal
computer industry. With cell phones morphing into little computers, profits will lie in their software brains, not
their wireless guts. If Microsoft captures the market, Schaumburg-based Motorola could be relegated to the low-margin
role of assembling smart phones powered by Windows-based operating systems. New Motorola CEO Edward Zander, a veteran
of Microsoft archrival Sun Microsystems Inc., knows the risks. He's betting that Motorola's software will be ready
for the mass market before Windows attracts a wireless following, and that he can spin away from Microsoft intact. No
other big cell phone maker was willing to take that bet before Motorola.