Barrons reports that Steve Ballmer may be scheduled to make a guest appearance during Steve Job's keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7, 2010. This would be quite a thing, the nature of the announcement is that Microsoft is positioning Visual Studio 2010 as the tool to write native apps for the iPhone and iPad.
I don't remember the battle for developer mindshare ever having been quite this fierce. Apple has done a good job over the past few years of turning its developer partners into selling (Go To Market) partners. If this rumor is true, then Apple will have made a very interesting play to turn Microsoft's development partners into Apple's GTM partners.
I am having a hard time envisioning how this benefits Microsoft. Sure there will be more VS2010 licenses sold, but VS developers fueling the Apple App Store? Maybe the carrot of VS built apps easily transferable to become Win Phone 7 Apps is big enough to justify the risk of long term developer partner erosion. Well, June 7 will definitely be an interesting day.
Maybe Steve B will lift the ban on iPhones on the MS campus!