Microsoft never had a chance in mobile
Everyone was leery about getting into bed with them because they saw how they dominated the hardware manufacturers with Windows, and they didn't want the same fate. They ended up there anyway with Android, but at the time they believed Microsoft was much more evil than Google. Live and learn, I guess.
The few who did got burned badly. Remember Sendo? No one does, because their partnership with Microsoft bankrupted them. Nokia suffered the same fate, you only remember them because of what they used to be. Their list of other partners include has beens like Motorola, Palm, Nortel and Ericcson. The only companies that survived a mobile partnership with Microsoft are LG and Verizon, but only because mobile hardware was such a small part of their overall business.
Their other problem was they wanted so badly to tie it to Windows, and while that might be useful in the business world it was stupid and pointless for consumers. That forced a variety of dumb decisions, culminating in destroying the finally-usable GUI in Windows 7 for the abortion that was Windows 8. Google didn't have a desktop to worry about, giving them a lot of freedom to make radical changes like their quick switch from a Blackberry like device to an iPhone like device after Steve Jobs showed them the future. They were smart and realized that's where the market would go, meanwhile Steve Ballmer was laughing at iPhone and talking up the Blackberry imitating Windows Mobile.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
