NET RESULTS:Collaboration looks like a perfect match, but both partners will have to play catch-up with Apple and Google

IN ALMOST 15 years of reviewing technology products, only once have I become so frustrated with a gadget that I had to restrain myself from throwing it against a wall.

Take a bow Samsung’s Omnia smartphone running Windows Mobile 6 – you really were a dog. The problem was not Samsung’s hardware but Microsoft’s crazy attempt to squeeze a desktop operating system on to the limited screen of a smartphone.

I was clearly not the only one to give Microsoft some frank feedback on the operating system.

Windows Phone 7 made its debut last year. Despite the name suggesting this was a simply new version of previous efforts, Microsoft threw out everything it had developed for mobile and started from scratch. It was a brave move and largely a successful one.

Reviews were positive and manufacturers, including Samsung, HTC and LG, released handsets using the software.

Despite this, it seemed that Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software, favoured by most of the same phone-makers who were early adopters of Windows Phone, were set to dominate the smartphone market.

Rumours of a tie-up between Microsoft and handset giant Nokia first emerged last September after Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was ousted and Stephen Elop, the president of Microsoft’s business division, was installed as head of the Finnish phone company.

Those rumours, or at least most of them, were confirmed last week when the world’s biggest software maker and the world’s largest mobile phone maker announced a deep collaboration which will see Windows become the operating system of choice for Nokia’s high-end smartphones.

On paper, it looks like a match made in heaven combining the powerhouse in hardware with the leader in software. What could possibly go wrong?

In reality, plenty. Nokia is still the leading mobile brand, but most of its growth is in the developing world, while interloper Apple and traditional competitors using Android are dominating the high-margin and fast-growing smartphone market.

In a recent leaked memo to Nokia staff, Elop compared the company’s situation to that of someone on a “burning platform” trying to decide whether to jump into freezing waters below. “We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time,” Elop admitted.

Microsoft, which according to some reports may have offered billions of dollars in cash, marketing support and other sweeteners to get Nokia to choose it over Google, is not coming to this marriage from a position of strength either.

Just because Microsoft has made leaps forward with Windows Phone 7 does not mean that it has cracked the challenge of small devices. Windows Phone 7 still lacks basic features such as cut and paste, multi-tasking and a decent app store.

The iPhone was also severely limited when it launched in 2007 and, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said most of Windows Phone 7’s shortcomings would be addressed in updates this year.

However, Nokia and Microsoft are now playing catch-up to Apple and Google rather than effectively creating a new market, like the iPhone did.

With the exception of Ballmer, Microsoft has undergone an almost total changing of the guard among senior management in the last two years. The early signs are that the changes are positive – Kinect for the Xbox is the most obvious example of how Microsoft is innovating in a sector where it was at risk of being an also ran.

However, innovation at a company as big and successful as Microsoft doesn’t always come easy. There is no guarantee that the successor to Windows Phone 7 will be a step in the right direction. On the PC Windows, XP was a leap forward from previous releases, but its successor Vista, is best confined to the scrapheap of technology history.

On the plus side, Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of engaged developers around the world who can’t but help having had their heads turned by tales of teenage iPhone developers in their bedrooms grossing thousands of euro a week selling apps.

And while Nokia has proven beyond any shadow of doubt in recent years that software is its Achilles heel, it is still capable of making hardware that will give anyone a run for their money.

For Nokia, a deep relationship with Microsoft differentiates it from competitors, which have embraced Android and seem only lukewarm on Windows. If it did actually manage to generate a bidding war between Google and Microsoft for its hardware, it has been an even better piece of business for Nokia.

The big elephant in the room is whether Microsoft may ultimately attempt to acquire Nokia. In a response to a heckler in Barcelona this week, Elop was forced to deny he was a “Trojan horse” for his former employers.

The partnership announced last week will certainly enable Microsoft to conduct a far deeper level of due diligence on Nokia than it could ever have hoped for previously. Whether that transpires or not, we are likely to be waiting at least another year to see the first Microkia/Nokiasoft phones.

I’ll have to wait until then to see whether they become potential wall smashers or dislodge the iPhone from my pocket.