Just a few days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Samsung as a key partner building Windows RT tablets, Samsung says it won't be releasing a Windows RT tablet in the U.S. because there simply isn't enough demand for it. That raises the question: Is there a future for Windows RT?

It's easy to count Microsoft's Windows Phone as a distant also-ran in the smartphone market, but there's some signs that it may finally be catching on. Nokia reports big sales for its Lumia line of Windows Phones, and Lenovo says that it may well launch a Windows Phone 8 line this year.

Initial Windows 8 sales have likely been sluggish, but that will change once there's widespread availability of touch devices, including tablets, hybrid devices, and traditional PCs. So says one of Microsoft's top Windows executives.

The sluggish launch of Windows 8 may be just the beginning of bad news for the new operating system. A new report says that tablets will far outsell notebooks in 2013. So all those fancy new Windows 8 ultrabooks at CES may not make a big enough difference for Microsoft because Microsoft's share of the tablet market is negligible.

This year, the stakes are higher than ever for Microsoft at CES, which hopes that a new slate of ultrabooks will jumpstart Windows 8's sluggish start. But as impressive as the new ultrabooks may be, they can't save Windows 8 or the struggling PC market.

The Federal Trade Commission's slap on Google's wrist was wrong-headed, an abdication of responsibility, and will ultimately harm businesses and consumers -- so says Microsoft. In a blog posted shortly after the FTC decision, Microsoft takes the feds to task and warns that the decision will only embolden Google.

There's a new anti-trust bully on the block, and its name is Google. So claims Microsoft, charging that the search giant is using its might to impede competition, notably by blocking full access to YouTube by Windows Phone 8 devices.

There's new evidence that sales of Windows 8 devices remain lackluster at best, so much so that Fujitsu, a key Microsoft hardware partner, has complained about weak sales. This isn't the way that Microsoft drew things up when it designed the new operating system.

This year was a rocky one for Microsoft, in which it released one of the most controversial versions of Windows in its history, its Windows chief left the company, and its mobile strategy continued to struggle. I covered all that, and also some non-Microsoft topics in my blog this year. Here are my five most popular blog posts of the year. Some you might expect, but there are some ringers that will surprise you.

It's getting to sound like a broken record: Two new reports find that Windows Phone 8 still isn't making headway, with a market share of between 2% and 3% in the U.S. and with only slightly higher numbers throughout the world. Will the struggling smartphone operating system ever take off?