Remember what a joke it was when Microsoft decided to enter the burgeoning handheld computer market about 5 years ago? They had absolutely no experience in the market, and their operating system for personal digital assistants (PDAs), then called Windows CE, was widely ridiculed throughout the industry for being too bulky. Not to mention that Palm was an established and respected incumbent with over 70 percent of market share. Microsoft didn't stand a chance, right?

Wrong. Microsoft may have stumbled early in entering the mobile market, but like usual, it is finishing strong. In the third quarter of 2002, Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system, renamed two years ago, had 30 percent of the market sewn up, up from just 16 percent the year before. And Palm's share of the market has been steadily slipping, coming in at 48 percent, according to Dataquest, a U.S.-based market research firm. It's known as the "Microsoft Effect," the sinking feeling a market leader gets when it learns Microsoft is planning to enter its market. And now, the big, bad, boys from Redmond have their sites set on the smart phone market. This time, we'd better take them seriously.