This is normally a nerve-wracking time of year for PC makers, because they have to place bets on the upcoming holiday selling season. Bet too much, and they’ll have to shed the overstock after New Year’s with profit-bleeding promotions. Bet too little, and their competitors will gladly fill the orders.

The Windows 8-based ultrabooks they’ll be offering are pretty cool – cool enough that the PC vendors should be betting big. But after a year of losing sales to tablets, they’re not. Their pre-season jitters are on steroids.

With that as a backdrop, you would have expected Intel CEO Paul Otellini to deliver the pep talk of his career at this year’s Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Maybe something like this: “Now, finally, we’ve got systems that address many of the shortcomings that the tablet phenomenon has exposed. So let’s go out there and take back our market!”

But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even speak this year. Why not?

Read the entire column on InformationWeek.com.

It’s a two-horse race right now in the smartphone market: Android on Samsung and iOS on Apple. But on the next turn, Microsoft will have a golden opportunity to nudge its thoroughbred into the pack. To achieve that, Windows Phone 8 needs to be good, but it doesn’t have to be the best platform out there.

To move the market-share needle, Microsoft will have to fix something that bothers us about the platforms we’re carrying around today. They’ll also have to solve something the carriers don’t like about Android and iOS.