Gates Nixes Zunephone Dreams

A moment of silence, please, for the Zunephone -- a glorious, sexy dream while it lasted. Which would be from a couple of weeks ago until this morning, when German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an interview with Bill Gates in which he uncategorically denies Microsoft is interested in the hardware end of the handset business.

No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program...We have partnerships with a lot of device manufacturers from Samsung to Motorola, and this variety brings us significantly more than if we would make our own mobile phone.

Microsoft won't launch iPhone rival: report [Reuters]