Speaking on Tuesday at the CTIA mobile trade show, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer definitively said that the company would not bid for wireless spectrum licenses next year. Reuters quotes Ballmer as saying, “What would it buy us to buy a piece of spectrum, one piece of spectrum in one country…It would do a lot to alienate the telecom industry.” Google, which publicly said it may bid on the spectrum, recently declined to confirm whether it would in fact do so when the auction begins in January 2008.

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Business Issues

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling