Last week I packed off to Redmond, WA for my annual pilgrimage to Microsoft's MVP Summit. I'll spare you all the silly taunting about knowing stuff I can't talk about, etc... and just get to the point.

I'm a XNA/DirectX MVP, an ASP Insider and a Languages (VB) Insider... so I actually had access to a pretty broad spectrum of information over the last week. Most of my time was focused on Windows Phone 7 related sessions, and while I can't dig deep into specifics, I can say that Microsoft is definitely not out of the fight for Mobile.

The things I saw tell me that Microsoft is listening and paying attention to feedback, looking at what works & what doesn't and they are working their collective asses off to close the gap between Google and Apple.

Anyone who has been in this industry for a while can tell you Microsoft does their best work when they are the underdog. They are currently behind, and have a lot of work ahead of them, but this is when they bring all their resources together to solve a problem.

After the week I spent in Redmond, and the feedback I heard from other MVPs, and the technological previews I saw... I feel confident in betting heavily on Microsoft to pull this off.