Microsoft’s smartphone market share sizzles to a record low. Ballmer says “We must be doing something right.”

Back in October I predicted that Microsoft’s Windows Phone would be the third man of the smartphone platforms market. But not with this attitude.

It’s difficult to say exactly what Microsoft’s market share is of the smartphone platform market. And Microsoft ain’t talking. But such a sound of silence means only one thing: the numbers are down and they are very bad. Pitiful probably. A bit of reverse engineering, looking at Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Symbian numbers, puts Windows Phone Q3 share at less than 1% of smartphones shipped during Q3 and probably closer to 0.5%. So with numbers like that you’d think Microsoft would be wearing the attitude of a challenger.

Nope. So, here we have Ballmer providing some indirect guidance to Google on everything they’ve done wrong on their way to reach more than 50% market share.

In other news, Michael Dell provides some excellent advice to Apple’s CEO on what to do with the company: “What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” (October 1997.)

Go get ’em guys.