Microsoft this week announced an agreement to acquire Danger Inc., the designer of the popular Sidekick mobile handsets.

"The acquisition, whose terms were not disclosed, derails an initial public offering worth up to $100 million envisioned in Danger's government filings in December," notes Red Herring's Ken Schachter. (According to GigaOM's Om Malik, the price was a rather hefty $500 million.)

ZDNet's Jason D. O'Grady (among many others) says it's a clear attempt on Microsoft's part to counter the popularity of the iPhone. "Microsoft isn't buying Danger for the Hiptop OS," he writes. "The acquisition appears to be a hardware play. Microsoft most likely wants to leverage Danger's experience building mobile handsets to develop a ZunePhone to compete with iPhone and the Google phone... It's a curious move, though, because Microsoft has always maintained that they don't want to be a hardware company and want to leave that side of the business to their partners..."

More here from Wired ... more here from Ars Technica ... more here from The Register ... more here from CNET News ... more here from iLounge ... more here from Computerworld ... more here from the NYT ... more here from the AP ... more here from Reuters ... and the press release is here.