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Yes, where exactly was Microsoft at Code Camp? (Behind you!)

Platinum sponsor was Forum Nokia; gold sponsors of Orange Code Camp were Palm, Symbian and Intel. Microsoft? Silver sponsor. And where were the Microsoft sessions? What, there were none? (well, none that I saw*)

Nobody is going to persuade me that Microsoft is short of cash.

Yet there was a definite lack of buzz about the Microsoft Smartphone platform in Poitiers. There were well-attended sessions for PalmOS, and PalmSource CEO David Nagel was there (riding a Segway, as it happens) while senior Nokia and Symbian directors backed up their technical lecturers for the code training days, which were also well attended.

So were the Orange sessions, of course - packed out. It was only the Intel sessions and (oddly) the Forum Nokia ones which were sparsely attended.

But if you look at the programme for the day you'll discover virtually no* Microsoft "Windows Mobile 2003" sessions - just the "introduction" session in the graveyard slot at the end of the party when everybody is heading off to the airport. And if you recall, Microsoft cancelled its Mobile Developer Conference for 2004, restricting its mobile training to the mobile stream at TechEd 2004 in Amsterdam, earlier this year.

With nobody here in Poitiers to ask from Microsoft, it was worth asking the delegates what they thought.

"Microsoft? It has taken its eye off the ball on mobile. They're focused, instead, on media," said one developer."

Another said: "Microsoft is only interested in content these days, and nothing is happening on mobile."

A third was more critical: "There's a serious problem with the extensions to the SMS standard. Most phone makers support them; two don't. They are Palm and Microsoft. Palm has responded to our complaint, and will include the extensions next year, in a later rev of PalmOS. Microsoft just said they 'didn't see it as their problem' and suggested that they would wait for someone to write an application to handle it."

The fact that they paid to be a silver sponsor begins to look more like a political gesture, than a sense of involvement ... a case of "Oh, look, we can afford to put some money in, will that shut them up?"

Unless, of course, Microsoft really is running short of cash ...

Or, of course, unless I wrote this story pretty late at night, and missed the stuff about Microsoft. Don't you hate it when you screw up, in public