In the realm of bold statements, you might expect Microsoft's vocal and boisterous CEO Steve Ballmer to be sounding off.  But instead it was mustachioed chief operating officer Kevin Turner who was playing the axman leveling a wild statement against one of Microsoft's chief rivals.

Speaking about the Windows Phone 7 series, which will be released over the holiday season, Turner remarked, "It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm okay with that."

The remark was not first time Microsoft admitted that Vista -- which never passed its predecessor Windows XP and was swiftly passed by its successor Windows 7 -- was far from a success.  Ballmer had previously bemoaned that Vista was "not executed well."

It is also unsurprising that the iPhone 4 would be receiving criticism.  From Apple's arrogant approach to antenna issues (it's all in your head -- the phone is just drawing the signal bars wrong) which yielded a new class action suit, to proximity sensor issues, the iPhone 4 is coming under increased scrutiny.  Even the typically pro-Apple Consumer Reports, despite offering overall praise for the phone's hardware, said it could not recommend it because of the severe antenna problems.

What is perhaps surprising is that Microsoft would be the one to criticize Apple's phone debacle.  Microsoft just had its own phone bungle when its 2-year long Kin project (stemming from the $500M+ USD Danger acquisition) ended after two months in a train wreck.  Estimates indicate that just over 8,000 Kin phones were sold.  Much of the reason for the failure was reportedly due to Microsoft's insistence that Danger port its code to Windows CE.

Furthermore, Microsoft has even shown close to showing admiration for its rival's success in the smartphone sphere.  It has said that it is "following in Apple's line" in releasing a feature incomplete phone (in its opinion) early, and then filling in the holes.  It is also embracing Apple's approach of censoring adult materials, and even joined in the criticism of Adobe's Flash platform.