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Windows Mobile 6.5 out 'by the fourth quarter'

Posted on Friday, Apr 24, 2009 by Phil Nickinson
 
Filed Under: News; Tags: wm65, wm6.5, windows mobile 6.5, microsoft

Believe it or not, we've been working all this time without a firm date of when we'll start seeing the official release of Windows Mobile 6.5. (Yes, we're fully aware of more nefarious ways of getting it right now.)

Just before Mobile World Congress and the official announcement of WM6.5 came a story from ZDNet saying that we'd be looking at September. At Steve Ballmer's presentation in Barcelona (watch it here), he'd only say "later this year." But in a transcript of Microsoft's fiscal year (different than the calendar year most of us follow) third-quarter earnings report, the launch window is specifically narrowed to this:

"You can expect to see phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 by the fourth quarter of this calendar year."

Of course, anything can happen, but we're taking that to mean we should see Windows Mobile 6.5 officially released by October. Hopefully we'll find out more in a couple of weeks at the TechEd event.

 
 

Comments

"...but we're taking that to mean we should see Windows Mobile 6.5 officially released by October."

You should state "...by October, at the earliest" since that's just the start of Q4. They could release all the way into December and still be within Q4.

Submitted by Eludium-Q36 (not verified) on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 11:39.

No, you've misread it yourself - Microsoft stated:

"You can expect to see phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 *by* the fourth quarter of this calendar year."

Note the term 'by' rather than 'in' - what this means (to me anyway) is that by the time we reach Q4 ie by October 1st, there will be phones running 6.5. If 6.5 came out in December, then on October 1st there would be no phones running it (legitimately) and so this statement would be inaccurate.

Submitted by Luke (not verified) on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 11:56.
Exactly.
Submitted by Phil Nickinson on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 11:57.

Oh this makes me jump for joy.

So lets see, WM 6.5 is announced at Mobile world congress at the end of February, and the guess is that it'll be released in October. Thats only 8-9 months after the initial announcement.

My guess is that the October date gets pushed back. Hell, maybe MS should just wait until MWC 2010 and announce WM 6.5. Then they could add a disclaimer to the announcement stating: "This time we mean it....seriously".

While they're at it, they could gear us up for a 2012 release of WM 7.

Submitted by badchad (not verified) on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 12:38.

That's too bad.
I'm running it now on my Touch Pro, and it's really good, but by the time devices are released with it, they'll be facing competition from the Pre, cupcake, and iPhone 3.0.
Soon after that we'll start seeing devices with the newest blackberry OS.

If MS would put a little pressure on carriers to start pushing 6.5 ROMS to capable hardware, it could make the MS app store a formidable service right from release. As it stands it's in danger of becoming an also-ran...

Submitted by SomeAudioGuy on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 12:47.

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