Google debuts Gears for Windows Mobiles

This year’s CeBIT trade show is turning into a proper mobile web punch up. The announcements from Microsoft, Yahoo and now Google are really showing just how competitive the mobile applications space is getting. So what’s Google’s big reveal for CeBIT? Google Gears for mobiles, a program which lets users work on Google applications even when they’re offline.

Now you’ll be able to get Google Gears on your Windows Mobile if you have one. Google Gears, which the search giant describes as a mobile browser extension for creating rich web applications for mobile devices, is now available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and should be available on Android soon.

This looks like an attempt by Google to charm business mobile users – the most like to be using Windows devices and to need offline access to apps. It’s a good start, but I’d like to see more applications, particularly office productivity software, using Gears.