Dear Steve Ballmer. This will not help sell Windows Phone.

The smartphone wars are a global, multi-trillion-dollar decade long fight.

We are in year 4.

Meaning...much will happen, much will change and no one, no platform, no device, no company can yet be declared the winner.

But Microsoft continues to look like it will be the loser if it doesn't start taking the smartphone seriously. And, and this is almost unfathomable to me, they still have no strategy!

As I predicted years ago, and as has now been confirmed, smartphones are outselling PCs. This will never again change. Apple's Mac is growing (much) faster than the "PC" industry.

iPad is destroying sales of new/cheap PCs.

And still I cannot purchase a quality Windows Phone phone in the US. 

How can not *legions* of employess at Microsoft, up to and including Steve Ballmer, not be unceremoniously sacked for this?

It's as if six months after Pearl Harbor, the US fleet chose not to engage the Japanese Navy but instead said...just you wait. In 18 months we'll show you who's boss!

Microsoft did *not* strike the iPhone when it was launched. Nor when it opened the App Store. Nor with 3GS. Nor with iPhone 4S. Nor with iPad. Nor with iPad 2.

Except for Samsung, *every single Android handset maker* is hurting. Motorola can't make a profit, despite all the love that has been lavished upon it by Verizon and Google.

Giant Sony continues to flail.

Blackberry -- dominant in the enterprise -- is in freefall.

HTC, once the mighty king of Android, a little Taiwanese company that long ago befriended Microsoft, and had dreams of becoming a global brand, is being utterly decimated by Samsung, once also a Microsoft friendly and who sends cash to Redmond for every single (tens of millions) of Android devices they sell.

Still Microsoft has no response.

How can this be? What has Microsoft been doing for the past ten years? Where have all the billions of shareholder dollars they've spent gone?

In Microsoft's home market of the United States, nearly every single new smartphone customer purchases a Android (57%) or an iPhone 34%). Almost none of the remaining 9% goes to any Microsoft/Windows device.

Microsoft's plan?

Zune.

Yes, that Zune. 

If you are one of the very few people to go into a Microsoft Store, wherever the hell those are, and get yourself a Windows Phone, Microsoft will give you a year's free Zune Music Pass.

That's straight up fucking embarrassing.

Ameica should be absolutely ruling the smartphone landscape! We have Apple and iPhone, Google and Android, Amazon and Android, Twitter, Facebook, Paypal.

In fact, we are! Sadly, however, Microsoft -- even in 2012 -- remains lost at sea.