According to Gartner, Microsoft is still a player in the Smartphone space. I knew that, but it's not something that gets a lot of press. One of the phones they mention is the Samsung Omnia (again, one that doesn't get much press) - it sounds like most of the sales for it would be in Europe though. From Engadget:

Unfortunately, the phone has to get slapped with the usual word of warning that you won't be able to latch onto any 3G in North America, because Samsung (in its infinite wisdom) saw fit to forgo a triband 3G chipset. These days, we're not buying any justification for this, particularly in a phone that sits this far up into the high end. Want to sell this only to your European customer base? That's fine, Samsung, but many of those folks are going to be traveling stateside on occasion, and they're going to want fast data when they do.

That's curious, but Samsung has its work cut out for it. To get a competitive touch experience, they've reskinned Windows Mobile completely (to varying levels of success and failure - follow the links to Engadget's review for details).

It sounds like MS isn't paying much attention to the mobile space right now, but is doing ok on the inertia of their early entry. I wonder if they'll step back up.

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