Jon Rettinger has put up a half hour long (I know, I know) video chronicling the fortunes of Microsoft in the Mobile space, at least as seen from a US-perspective. It's a great watch and pulls together a lot of perspective, not least the importance of license fees (or not), of timing (being a couple of years too late), and of competition (Nokia getting special treatment alienated all the other licensees). You'll need time and a decent drink to get through it, but it's worth it.

Here's Jon's video, as usual click through to YouTube and max out resolution and quality for best results, though note that a lot of the content is low-grade archive footage, so it doesn't matter as much as usual!

Good stuff and a good summary, though Nokia and Symbian fans will smart at the way Nokia's utter dominance in the smartphone world for almost a decade with Symbian didn't warrant a mention, because the USA was largely a Symbian-free zone. Oh well. There are still decent insights here, and Jon said several times how much he liked what Microsoft did with the Windows Phone interface and what Nokia did with its WP hardware...