Column: Microsoft and Samsung are taking dark paths

Can money buy Microsoft some smartphone love?

And why is Samsung trying to game benchmark tests?

These, my friends, are the questions that tech investors should be asking themselves this week while waiting for Twitter's highly anticipated IPO filing to drop.

So let's get down and explore the dark side of smartphone growth strategies.

As it stands now, Microsoft has a very weak position in the mobile device market that is completely upending the traditional PC business.

In the second quarter of this year, smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system held just 3.3% of the market share, according to Gartner. In tablets, Gartner tells us that Microsoft's Windows platform held 4.5% of the market.