So, the Daily Telegraph thinks that Microsoft is out to rival Nokia.

Me too. But I don't think the rivalry is in mobile phones, as the telegraph seems to imagine. I think it's the growth of the Internet as the main carrier for voice, which worries Nokia, which supplies its own standard of equipment.

I think that the main battle is in the User Interface, not the building of handsets or back-end infrastructure.

The launch of "Skype" - a voice over web utility written by the same team as one of the more popular P2P programs strikes me as "significantly more significant". Unlike Napster, the whole thing's "distributed" - there's no middleman. If you've got the software, you can use it. They can close down the Skype website and company... you can STILL use it. Microsoft's interested first last and always with making money, usually by controlling niche markets (The PC software market used to be a niche!)and dictating its own price. With Skype out there.... where's the money going to be made? I can understand why Nokia might be worried (but likewise, I see BT as being a hell of a lot MORE worried)

The telling phrase in the Torygraph's piece was to describe Nokia's market share as "waning". OK, it's not as big as it once was... but nobody describes Microsoft's grasp on the PC Operating system market as "waning" because Linux has shaved a few percent off. (The only time that Microsoft's grasp DID "wane" was when DR DOS had grabbed 27% of the market. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft drove them into insolvency)