The death of Pocket PC

I've been a Pocket PC user for quite a while, but I have to completely agree with Jeff Kirvin's column on how Palm is leaping ahead of Microsoft in terms of innovation on its platform. There's currently no innovation going on on the Pocket PC platform: give or take a slot or two, all the Pocket PC machines are identical. Compare that with what Sony is doing with the Palm platform, or Handspring, or even PalmOne itself. Ever couple of months brings a new and often radically different Palm machine.
But one of the other interesting points in Jeff's piece is on the question of whether Microsoft really cares about Pocket PC. Bill Gates uses a smartphone and a Tablet: no Pocket PC there. And the suspicion is that that's the way the world is going, with no room for the mid-sized handheld.
Ironically, of course, this is exactly the same logic used by Steve Jobs for Apple avoiding the handheld market like the plague.