In an interview with German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made clear that Microsoft will not (yet?) launch a product that directly competes with Apple's iPhone. This was speculated after the first Windows Mobile 7 screenshots unveiled earlier this week.
In the interview, Gates is quoted that Microsoft don't want to that (competing with the iPhone) but rather continue to concentrate on the Windows Mobile platform itself. At the end - if you read between the lines - it also means that "Zune Phone" cannot be expected anytime soon - as long as Zune isn't part of the Windows Mobile platform itself (think of an updated Windows Media Player experience):

"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," Gates said.

Nevertheless, even if I know that the possible Windows Mobile 7 GUI, as we might have seen previously, is way older then the Apple iPhone (you cannot develop something completely new within 4 months only which is the same with HTC's TouchFLO UI where development started before Apple announced the UI) it's clear that Apple was the first to market with a new kind of consumer friendly GUI. All other platform developers - from Microsoft's Windows Mobile to Symbian with Nokia's S60 and Sony Ericsson's UIQ' - will follow sooner or later.

Cheers ~ Arne