Thinking caps are on at Microsoft

While Apple's iPhone enjoys mountains of hype and steady sales since its launch last month, Microsoft has taken a different approach to the mobile market.

At Microsoft's Embedded Devices Experience design center, or MEDX, designers, engineers and strategists toil together with the goal of making handhelds as intuitive for users as possible, reports USA Today.

One research strategy MEDX employs is the use of ethnographers to shadow smartphone owners across three continents. MEDX can pair the results with its Asia findings - a region ahead of the US in the mobile realm - to plot the future of mobile for the States.

The buzz for Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 launch in May paled in comparison to the iPhone, but, perhaps because of quiet research savvy, the mobile operating system has already been adopted by AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Qwest and 120 other telecoms in 55 countries, on more than 140 smartphones models, built by 48 device makers.

The iPhone, on the other hand, is only available on one carrier: AT&T.

Market reach for smartphones is expected to double from its current 10 percent to 20 percent, or 260 million phones, in 2010.