Microsoft Completes Danger Acquisition: Consumer Services En Route

A perusal of the Microsoft Press Release announcing they've completed the Danger acquisition tells us a few things. First, we were right as rain when we told you it was all about the services, baby:

Danger’s expertise in building great, intuitive client software for mobile handsets connected to powerful hosted back-end services fosters rich consumer experiences in communication, media sharing, entertainment and personalization.

It doesn't stop there, though. Microsoft is starting up a whole new consumer-focused division within their mobile group called “Premium Mobile Experiences” (PMX) to be headed up by Roz Ho, who formerly headed up the Mac Business Unit. The MacBU was highly regarded as a small, nimble, and highly successful group within Microsoft, churning out Mac Office updates that were often better than what could be found on the Windows Desktop. Hopefully we'll see more of the same in the PMX.

Ho's quote from the press release, “We want people to smile every time they look at their phone” gives us the grins, too, truth be told. Microsoft is fighting a two-front war with Windows Mobile right now and they look heavily armed for both battles: MSCMDM to help them fight the BlackBerry in the enterprise space and Danger's services to help them fight, er, everybody else in the consumer space. That probably makes RIM's Mike Lazaridis the desert fox and makes the iPhone Microsoft's Pearl Harbor. Or something -- we don't want to take this metaphor too far lest we fall afoul of Godwin's Law.

That's right, we just called Steve Jobs Hitler.