Leave Windows Mobile al-o-o-o-o-o-ne!

Big Money Matt Asay thinks they're Ballmer-y. Windows Mobile, he thinks, is like those CDOs cluttering up bank books all over the world.

What does the handset maker get for that money? What it should get is sell-through. Microsoft becomes responsible for having sales of Windows Mobile in the channel.

That means selling the Windows ecosystem, and expanding it. Microsoft must make Windows Mobile users feel they are part of an exclusive club.

That's what Apple does. They do it through marketing, through software, and through services like the iTunes store. They have become what my friend Rob Frankel calls a Big Time Brand.

Is Microsoft a Big Time Brand today? Ballmer thinks so. Matt doubts it. I doubt it, too, but I think the market can sort that out.

What is really at issue here, in the battle between Microsoft and Apple on the one hand and Google, Nokia, and open source on the other, is a basic view of how 21st century markets work.

Apple and Microsoft pull people into stores. Open source does not work that way. It lacks the money to invest in doing that.

It comes down to what Seth Godin calls permission. Where is it, and what's its value?

While Microsoft starts its marketing embrace when you give it transaction permission -- when you buy from it -- Google and open source gain many other types of permission first, what you might call "free permission."

You will buy a Google Android phone because it has so much stuff on it that comes free. The user interface. The services. The applications.

You will buy a Windows Mobile phone because Microsoft convinced you to buy it. Just as with a Blackberry or an iPhone.

We will see which works best.