I would on the contrary take it as obvious that any CEO of a competing company would take the iPhone as a threat, and anticipate and plan for any possibility, j

I would on the contrary take it as obvious that any CEO of a competing company would take the iPhone as a threat, and anticipate and plan for any possibility, just from having looked at history and seen where Apple went with for instance the iPod. I think this video very clearly shows how Ballmer managed to not take the iPhone seriously, and that has everything to do with why Microsoft made mistakes and were slow to respond from 2007 onwards. The same thing happened with the iPad as well. From everyting he said, you could see that he regarded them as toys.