Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, president of the company's Entertainment & Devices Division, told Bloomberg that he envisioned that Google's foray into directly selling and marking the phone could scare away other Android licensees.

“Doing both in the way they are trying to do both is actually very, very difficult,” Bach said. “Google’s announcement sends a signal where they’re going to place their commitment. That will create some opportunities for us and we’ll pursue them.”

Speaking from experience Bach presided over Microsoft's own "PlaysForSure" Windows Media strategy for delivering a licensed software platform that hardware makers could use to build MP3 players, in competition with Apple's iPod. When that program failed to gain much traction, Microsoft took matters into its own hands by announcing a plan to deliver a Microsoft-branded Windows Media player under the Zune brand.

The company insisted that the Zune would only compete against Apple's iPod, leaving PlaysForSure licensees to continue their growth in parallel. However, as was obviously the case even at the time, the Zune only managed to kill off PlaysForSure devices and assume their small share of the overall MP3 market without making any progress into Apple's territory.

Bach recently told analysts who were critical of the company's foray into music players that it continues to feel it has a shot in the music business and that it views the market as critical to the company's overall strategy. However, he also admitted that given the chance to do things over, the company would have done things differently, although he didn't explain what he thought would have worked better.

Regardless of the path Microsoft had taken, its Windows Media platform appeared headed for disaster. Without the Zune, the company would be dealing with the same kinds of problems that it faces in smartphones, where it has (so far) avoided releasing its own branded phone in deference to its Windows Mobile licensees, primarily HTC.

But that alternative strategy hasn't stopped Microsoft's phone platform from quickly sliding into irrelevance in terms of actual sales, consumer mindshare nor in developer attention. Consumer products benefit from tight integration to a greater degree than PCs, where Microsoft has successfully ruled the roost as the world's dominant PC operating system provider.