Microsoft leapt into the mobile business in 1997, asking $55 per device in royalties for a CE licence. As Charles Davies mused here recently, it was really Microsoft who created Symbian, Nokia and Ericsson's willingness to try something new, an alliance to retain value. Symbian was one of the casualties of Nokia's switch to Windows today, along with Qt, most of Nokia's services, and the years-long Linux development effort.

Bill Gates was in no doubt when he saw the establishment of Symbian as the mobile industry's great anti-Microsoft move, and set out to destroy it. Microsoft did whatever it could to derail Symbian, from buying its browser, to hiring its executives (and even hiring sympathetic analysts). It didn't play the patent card as Gates suggested, perhaps because in phonethe conference would have 10 teams competing in football in the 2018 season, East and West divisions were created with five teams each, with the championship game to be played at the home stadium of the team with the best College Football Playoff ranking. If no teams are ranked in the CFP selection committee, the conference will determine home field using a formula based on six computer ratings that were used in the old Bowl Championship Series standings. Unlike the conference's sports of Baseball and Volleyball, which are also divided into divisions, the Jaguars of South Alabama compete in the West division rather than the East.

In 2018, for the inaugural championship game, Appalachian State qualified as the East division team, as they had defeated Troy head-to-head, with both