Steve Ballmer's leaked email suggests Microsoft Zune phone is on the cards

Posted by Katherine Hannaford on Fri 25 Jul 2008

Zune-Zune, Zune-Zune..."hello?"

Somewhere in the US of A, Bill Gates is fuming. He knew it was inevitable that his replacement, Steve Ballmer, would one day ruin his plans for ~~world domination~~ surprising the world with a Zune phone, and is cursing the day he ever decided to retire.

In an internal email to all the Microsoft employees, Ballmer reportedly stated "we're changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We'll do the same with phones - providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences."

Up until now, the only Microsoft has only dabbled in phone software, namely Windows Mobile, but never hardware - although this leaked mail-out sounds suspiciously suggestive of a Microsoft-branded mobile phone. But would that be such a bad thing, looking at our artist's render of a Zune/Xbox 360 mobile?

(via MacRumors)