If you have been watching whats going on with Microsoft and Yahoo, the Danger acquisition may have slid by you without notice. This is a substantial asset for Microsoft, and its media partner ecosystem. Let me explain a little further, besides grabbing one of the best media portals (Yahoo), a deal with MTV, and now Walmart via Real Networks, they now have DANGER. The most popular youth culture device on the market, and hands down more units shipped than the popular iPhone. Not to diss the iPhone and its slick UI, but the SIDEKICK was embraced, and still is, by a huge YOUTH MARKET who cant afford the iPhone. Whats curious is to see how they play with Sun, will they keep the Java OS, and also support the Win Mobile, or dump it all together? More on that later….

For companies that focus on the media vertical and are Microsoft partners this will give them a huge new user base to deploy mobile applications and content services without having to port over products. Microsoft also made an acquisition of a company name Musiwave which will arm the DANGER devices with a full mobile content catalog, and allowing theme to compete with Nokia and other managed services models the OEM have embraced.

I can surely say that Apple must be gearing up for the battle, as I feel this fight will be in full swing by the third quarter of this year.