[Russ Smith]

It's good to have ambitions. It's even better to have a strategy to make them happen.

Is it possible for MS to capture 40% mobile device market share? Sure. They already did something similar once with DOS/Windows on the desktop. The key was making it work well enough and making deals for it to be placed as the primary or only OS on the hardware. That strategy gave rise to the current anti-trust suits that would make a similar strategy less possible now.

Is it likely that they'll figure out a way to do it? I'm not so sure. They seem to have some difficulty figuring out a good strategy and sticking with it. They're currently losing market-share in Windows at least in part because of conflicting strategies.

Would it be a good thing if they did? I'm of mixed minds on this. On the one hand, Windows is the target for software these days because of the overwhelming market-share. It's also the target for viruses and malware for the same reason. The competition between alternatives usually forces a faster rate of improvements. That's good for the consumer because we get more functionality but bad because you "need" to upgrade more often, with the associated expenses and re-learning time. Who wants to buy a new phone every two years only to find that some of your data and most of your add-ons won't work on or transfer to the new one?

There are also expenses associated with buying "the wrong standard" before the competition shakes out. People with AMD SLI motherboards and with HD-DVD players know what I'm talking about.