Microsoft should cut out the middlemen, build its own phones

This makes no sense to me, and seems to be randomly projecting Apple's current success with a different product line (the iPhone/iPod Touch) back into the past.

The iPod was a hit before the "store" existed, for example. And even iTunes as a "music manager" didn't arrive on windows till later on. Was Microsoft even pushing a device OS at this point? Apple's was very bare bones and device specific and I would assume all the competitors had similar code for their hardware with very little but the PlaysForSure DRM being shared between devices.

I thought the iPod succeeded because Sony were being arrogant and expecting everyone to transcode to ATRAC, Microsoft were being arrogant and expecting everyone to transcode to WMA and both seemed keen on putting DRM even on CDs you ripped yourself.

Apple supported mp3s which had already got the seal of approval from digital pirates and let you freely rip CDs in a way that wouldn't delete your collection if you upgraded your machine. They also had widespread Firewire in the days before USB 2 so you could fill the drive in a reasonable time frame. I can't count how many firewire cards I fitted to friends and colleagues PCs when they were following me onto the iPod bandwagon.

Fundamentally if you can't execute then it doesn't really matter what you're strategy is. I don't see how jumping from one poorly executed strategy to a 2nd hand strategy from Apple is going to help unless you can deliver on it.