The Microsoft Apple face-off comes in a multitude of flavors and the mobile phone market is just another front for the two companies to go head-to-head on. With Microsoft already an established presence in the mobile industry and with the Windows Mobile operating system, Apple has found itself in the position of a newcomer. And the Cupertino-based company has gone all out with the iPhone and has even apparently sacrificed the upcoming release of Mac OS X Leopard to the phone.

Apple is aiming no less than to replicate the design success of the Mac computers and the iPod digital media players with the mobile handset. The iPhone plans are modest, much in the same manner as with Microsoft's Zune and the iPod. While Zune is still on track to selling one million devices by the end of June 2007, the same date will debut the availability of the iPhone and the start of the run to 1% of the market. But while 1% of the mobile market is equivalent with a healthy slice out of a volume of 1 billion mobile devices sold per year. Apple's iPhone selling 10 million items in the first year of availability will be nothing short of a success and a rough equivalent of what the company is selling with the iPod.

However, Apple's main competitor in the mobile industry is not Microsoft, not even by far. Although the Redmond Company established a strong presence, Apple would have to go against household names such as Motorola and Nokia. But this does not mean that the Apple and Microsoft feud won't transition to the mobile market. As Apple will release the iPhone in the US, Microsoft together with HTC have gone for the non-traditional American market. The HTC Touch mobile phone will be released outside the United States, and it will feature touch screen capabilities, not multi-touch like the iPhone and Windows Mobile 6. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in the past that the company has no plans to turn Zune into a phone and that it will continue to work with hardware partners for platforms for the Windows Mobile operating system.