Steve Ballmer dropped by to Australia (aka Oz) where he had a speech and Q&A session that kicked off alliance of Microsoft with Telstra Australia. One of topics was Windows Mobile and its competitors.

Here are some highlights:

• he used phrase "beautiful easy compelling way" but in current situation with Windows Mobile it hardly applies (still no finger based navigation and no fluid transitions in Windows Mobile)
• he underlined "software+service" idea that Microsoft brings and enables operators (like Telstra) to use high-bandwidth
• generally he mentioned 3 main areas of Microsoft's operations with Telstra (and probably also with other carriers):
• mobile services and devices (including a mention of custom Telstra user interface on top of Windows Mobile; covering also cloud synchronization in Live services probably)
• hosted business software (Exchange Server, Sharepoint Server, Office Communication Server, Live Meeting, etc)
• unified communications

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