Microsoft's #1 enemy right now would most likely be Google -- Balmer has been waging a war on the online front with Bing, and so far, has been losing pretty badly.
As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.
It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.
Exactly. All the big players are in competition with each other. Amazon and Google are at loggerheads over Android. But Amazon and Apple are competing in the online media delivery market too (Google is playing there too, but is a distant fourth right now to those two and Netflix). Microsoft doesn't care about Amazon, but wants a piece of the mobile OS market and the internet search world. And there are a hundred other smaller software companies and hardware OEMs trying to catch the stuff that drops out of the hands of the big folks.
There really aren't any major "alliances" right now. It's a mess.
As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.
It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.