Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has some general plans for expanding its current online services, which currently back its Zune music player and XBox Live gaming system, according to the NYT’s Bits blog. In the second part of a conversation focusing on mobile, J Allard, Microsoft’s VP, Design and Development, Entertainment and Devices, reprises earlier statements that the company does not intend to create its own version of Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone. Instead, the company wants to concentrate on partnering with carriers and cell phone makers on offering content based on the Windows operating system.

Although Allard says that Microsoft has no desire to make cell phones, he notes that you can never say never. After all, he says Microsoft had reservations about making a media player as well: “We didn’t create the Zune because we were dying to get into the hardware business and take inventory risk. We felt we had to do it… We got to create most of the magic and take none of the financial risk. History isn’t going to repeat that with consumer goods.”

After expressing his admiration for the iPhone as a great product in general, but a lousy iPod in particular ("You can’t skip a track without looking at it. You can’t go running with the thing"), Allard promises that Microsoft’s mobile music and entertainment features will feel more like the Zune’s experience.

-- Failing Fast: Hansell has a separate Bits post that features high points of a conversation with Chris Stephenson, Microsoft’s GM of global marketing for Zune. While the Zune and its accompanying music service are generally regarded as underwhelming, Stephenson says that the company has learned from “failing fast.”

-- Reinventing DRM: Some of the problems consumers have had with Zune were that were no podcasts and the record industry’s insistence on DRM, which has offered its own complications for Microsoft’s $15 per month subscription service, Stephenson says: “If we had full rights to every piece of music recorded since the beginning of time, and we could choose what to do with it, we could build a dynamite service… It would be free and available on every device… There would be advertising. Or it would be a loss leader to a higher value proposition.”

• Microsoft Prepares To Expand And Merge Online Services Behind Zune And XBox Live

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• Microsoft In Process of Acquiring Mobile Music Service Musiwave; Price Around $50 Million
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• Microsoft’s Allard: No Immediate Plans For Zune Phone