The lack of real news and even any sort of buzz at this fall's CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show was a real disappointment. While Microsoft's announcement is certainly noteworthy, nothing set the show on fire. Hell, the parties were barely fun.The show floor is closed. Booths are being packed up. And the weary are making mad dashes for SFO in hopes of catching their evening flights home. As far as CTIA shows go, this week has been a weird one. The most noteworthy aspect of the entire show is that it was completely un-noteworthy.

No super cool handsets were announced. No breakthrough products or services were announced. No major leaps forward in technology were brought to light. And the show floor was just quiet. Granted, the fall show is the smaller of the two CTIA shows held each year, but this year seemed deader than normal.

Perhaps that's because the show was held so late in the year. Last year it was held at the end of September, rather than the end of October. If you were to take all the handsets and services announced in the last four weeks, it's easy to see that many companies just didn't want to wait until the CTIA show this year to make their big splashes in the news.

The most talked about aspect of the show was Microsoft's new handset management server (which, by the way, is something that other companies have been doing for years). Think about that for a second. The most talked-about announcement at a wireless show was a new server from Microsoft. Can you hear the crickets chirping? I sure can.

They're saying, "There's always next year..."