Once I got my first SmartPhone a few years back, I really struggled to see why I bothered to carry my PDA anymore. Sure enough, my fairly new Sony Clie was relegated to the status of an unloved and uncharged toy, sadly gathering dust on a shelf. Not even my gadget-mad 12 year old son could find a use for it any more.

IDC’s new PDA figures show that I’m not the only one. PDAs are declining 20% year on year, with a mere 1.7 million units shipped in Q1 2005. This is the sixth successive quarterly decline.

Therefore, it’s with some puzzlement that I watched Pieter Knook’s (Microsoft’s Senior Vice President, Mobile and Embedded Devices
Division and Communications Sector ie head honcho of MS’s mobile strategy) recent presentation to analysts last week.

Now, the purpose of these presentations is to talk up the stock price, basically. So, woe betide any VP going on stage wringing his/her hands and focusing on bad news, even if he does have a haircut worthy of Big Bill himself.

But he starts off with the year’s highlights by saying:

We’ve had a great year. In fact, when you look back at some of the evidence that
you can see of our success, you see that we’ve made a lot of progress. Certainly
in the stand-alone PDA category, we are now the undisputed number one, having
surpassed Palm’s share by quite a margin.

The subtext of this is that their success in the PDA market is the best news he can put to the gathered analysts.

Microsoft’s battle with Palm in the PDA market is like two bald, old men, fighting over a comb. We won’t have PDAs in a few years, so what’s the point Mr Knook’s trying to make?

Mr Knook goes on to outline MS’s other plans in the mobile phone sector. In fairness, there’s some worthy, if uninspired, tactical initiatives. Knock RIM out of play by waiving MS’s license fees. Try to leverage Instant Messenger’s users into mobile phones - though I think this’ll be stoutly resisted by operators, who will see IM cannibalize the sms golden goose. Either that, or they’ll want to charge IM at an sms cost.

But where’s Microsoft’s big strategy here? There’s no real sign that they understand the importance of the mobile sector and that it could actually end up ruining their business.

The key sector in the mobile business is SmartPhones and they’re not only getting trounced by Symbian, but pissed on by Linux.

I’ve said it before; if they’re going to survive as a big player in technology, they need a strategy for the mobile sector. Urgently.