[Russ Smith]

I'm of two minds on this:
Bringing out it's own branded smart-phone will tend to make the other OEMs worried that MS may eventually under-cut them. That worry translates into at least examining the possibility of other OSes which translates into some ship-jumping.

On the other hand, smart-phones are often re-branded by the service providers (You often have the same hardware presented by the various cellular companies.) In that situation MS becomes (just?) another source for service providers to choose from.

For the most part, I'd have to say "bad idea." I think Microsoft has the potential for getting and holding onto a fair part of the smart-phone market as long as it sticks with it's Standard Operating Procedure. Back in the "Palm vs PPC" days, it was this strategy that eventually won out. PPC OS started out with a lot of potential that captured the interest of the enterprise market first. MS leveraged that into more consumer sales.

Probably the safest thing to do is to use the Danger team as a place to develop design concepts which they could sell to OEMs.