Microsoft's Frantic Race for Third Place in Smartphones

The company tries to attract mobile customers with its Windows 8 desktop-like operating system

It could take three or four years of Windows 8 exposure before people would want it on their phonesIllustration by Al Murphy

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By Sam Grobart

September 13, 2012 at 11:57 PM UTC

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This article is part of the September 17, 2012 issue of businessweek.

Apple’s not in the mobile phone business, it’s in the perpetual-motion business. If past performance is any indication, the announcement on Sept. 12 of the iPhone 5 will lead to a rush of customers when the first units go on sale. Apple releases product, people buy product. Rinse, repeat.

There’s another company that would like to be in the perpetual-motion business, too: Microsoft. The computing giant has some experience with this, having turned Windows into an indispensable part of the PC world for much of the 1980s and ’90s.The action has moved on to mobile now, and Microsoft has two wishes as it comes to that market with its line of Windows Phone 8 devices in the coming weeks: that there’s room for three companies in the battle and that it’ll be one of them.