Despite souping up the features on the MWC-debuted Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft still couldn't satisfy the demanding mobile crowd, who felt that the company needed more than a minimum update to bring its flagship mobile platform up to present standards.  If Microsoft can have its way, that will all change come 2010 with the company's planned introduction of Windows Mobile 7.

Both the present and the future of Windows Mobile was discussed in depth last Tuesday during Microsoft's Strategic Update Meeting.  Steve Ballmer confirmed that Windows Mobile is among the company's seven core businesses and, as such, will receive due attention from its 2,000 dedicated employees.   He also revealed that the division reaches close to a billion dollars in annual spending.

Its Present

According to Ballmer, Windows Mobile is considered a "somewhat unprofitable" venture, thus far, within the company, despite figuring in third among mobile OS market share, following the open-source Symbian and Blackberry's RIM.  With Apple and Android coming up hard from behind, the next few years will be key to seeing whether Windows Mobile can thrive, let alone take market leadership.  I'd add to that Linux Mobile's spirited move to take over the innards of low to mid-priced handsets and those 2,000 workers will find their hands full.  Ballmer is confident, though, that he OS will remain strong due to its prevalence among lower-priced devices and its positive price that affords it decent revenue.

The Future

Despite persistent rumors of a Zune phone, Ballmer denied any plans and maintained that Microsoft will remain focused on the software aspects of mobile products.  Windows Mobile 7 will begin shipping to phone manufacturers beginning November of this year and, hopefully, start appearing on actual consumer devices by April of 2010.

One of the few big announcements at MWC this year came in the form of Microsoft's highly anticipated update to their mobile platform, Windows Mobile 6.5.  While definitely welcome (considered how behind WinMo technology has been compared to the current crop of operating systems on high-end smartphones), the changes don't really bring anything new to the table and instead feels like a catch-up job that's more than a good year too late.

As expected, touch features have been souped up to bring it up to par with current handset requirements.   In fact, the Standard (non-touch) version of 6.5 remains almost unchanged from 6.1.  The Professional version, on the other hand, features plenty of interface updates designed to make it look more palatable (hopefully requiring less skinning in the part of manufacturers) and more responsive to touch controls.

Almost every aspect of the OS has been updated to feature finger-friendly operations, from menus to the control bars to the bundled applications, including the browser, contacts, calendar, messaging and email.  Windows Mobile fans will be happy to know that, as far as hands-on tests went, everything was responding exactly as they should.  The browser, in particular, has received a notable makeover and now features pretty impressive touch response as well as pop-up controls.  None of the changes, however, will trickle down automatically on third party apps.  According to the Microsoft, even the menu bar might not have its touch controls work as expected when used with add-on apps.

The home screen, a source of much criticism, has been updated and now looks infinitely better, apart from making navigation way easier than before.  Of course, it still feels a good deal behind other manufacturer-designed interfaces (especially with one big mess of apps that it calls a main menu), but should offer something better out of the box.

While these changes are very much welcome, there wasn't really anything presented that WinMo shouldn't have been doing in the first place.  In fact, the new features feel like they patched something terribly wrong instead of bringing forward something new.  To be honest, the only way Windows Mobile will provide serious competition in the current marketplace is by a total overhaul, a version 7.0 if you will.  Still, working touch controls and improved looks is better than nothing, right?