Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer got another chance to trash Apple's new pet project, the iPhone, and did not hesitate a single minute. After the MIX07 announcement of the oFone (taking a swing at the Cupertino's new device) via a spoof video during a presentation by Robbie Bach, the president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Ballmer took it upon himself to forecast the future of the device on the market.

And Microsoft's CEO failed to predict a major impact on the iPhone. In fact, quite the opposite, Ballmer believes that the iPhone will be adopted only superficially, and that customers will not jump at the chance of owning one.

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get," Ballmer predicted in an interview with USAToday.

With this perspective, Steve Ballmer contradicts the market reality. Microsoft owned at the end of 2006 a total of just 4.6% of the mobile operating system market. The smarphone ecosystem is dominated by Symbian with 72.5% and by Linux with 16.9%. Microsoft only accounts for the third position, actually having only a small market share.

The bottom line is that the iPhone has got a lot of free publicity and has even managed to take the wind out of Mac OS X Leopard's sales, Apple postponing the operating system until October 2007 in order to ship the iPhone this summer. And according to a study performed by Markitecture, 6% of the respondents displayed an interest in buying an iPhone within the upcoming year, while a total of 83% revealed that they were not in the least interested in the device.