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It is always good to get your story out, especially when something rather large is being announced by a competitor.  Robbie Bach, Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division President has dominion over a very large range of products.  Things like Zune, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Media Center are all his babies.  SF Gate sat him down for some rather pointed q&a.  Here are the highlights:

Zune Phone
Nope.  Not gonna happen.  Never.  Never ever.  Bach says phones are too personal to actually focus on just a device to meet all our needs.  He believes Windows Mobile is in the perfect position to satisfy all our mobile cravings.  3G?  Windows Mobile does it everyday (even before June 9).

“We don’t make phones ourselves. We don’t have any plans to make phones ourselves. “

Later in the interview, Bach says:
“We call them mobile phones but in fact they are going to become much more than mobile phones.  That is going to work fine for us. We’re comfortable making hardware.”

A change of thought?  At this point they were discussing music on phones and having your music across different devices.

Zune Touch
Probably the biggest thing going in the interview is this statement:

“...where there’s a screen, touch will be part of it. It’s not going to matter what the product line is. You’re going to see it be a cornerstone of the work we do. “

Touch Zune coming soon.  Cornerstone is an interesting choice of words for this.  With the advances of Surface coupled with “cornerstone of the work we do” I believe this to extend far out Zuneland and into MS mainstream.  Be it Windows Mobile, Media Center, Zune probably even Windows itself, touch is coming and MS wants to be there “early and often”.

Overall Bach did a good job at de-emphasizing the impact the iPhone is making on the market while saying MS is going to be big on phones that are so much more than phones, you know, like the iPhone.

Read [SF Gate]