Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sat down with the Washington Post this week and promptly told the nation's No. 6 newspaper that it will be out of the "paper" business within the next 10 years.
Hardly shocking news.
Where it gets weird is when he spoke about the mobile side of the MSFT world.
Ballmer said there still aren't enough cellphones equipped with decent Web browsers. If there's one thing the iPhone has proven, it's that "nobody wants mobile to be a separate world."
Maybe that's a sign that Redmond's finally taking mobile browsing seriously. And if anyone knows about Pocket IE's shortcomings, it's bound to be The Man himself.
And given that an in-depth study all 71 pages of it commissioned by The Associated Press shows that mainstream media may be starting to understand the importance of mobile browsing and RSS feeds (and, yes, the word iPhone appears a few times), there's hope that Microsoft could finally look to make PIE more than just a default browser and enter the same browsing league as the big boys.
