Jason Hiner has a dense but very important article that's been posted to ZDnet overnight. In it he looks at the reaction from a number of CIO's to the new smartphones on the market (including today's Apple announcements), and the fact that almost all of them are holding back to see what the combined Windows 8 story will deliver for them. The confluence of laptops, tablets, and smartphones looks very attractive to them

But, percolating under the surface there's another issue that could potentially catch the mobile market by surprise--growing anticipation in the corporate world for Windows 8 phones and tablets... That's the message we heard loud and clear this week when we did a private poll of the members of TechRepublic's CIO Jury, an international group of about 200 influential technology executives. To be fair, there are still plenty of IT executives excited about the next iPhone, but we were surprised at how much enthusiasm we heard about Windows devices--especially in response to a question about the iPhone where we never specifically asked about Windows 8.

Windows Phone 8 Start Screen

This isn't going to be an easy win for Microsoft, but it's another approach to establishing Windows Phone as the third mobile ecosystem and giving it the impetus to succeed in 2013.

Hiner's thoughts, and those of numerous CIO's, can be read here.