RumourMill: Windows Mobile 6.5 due next year, Windows Mobile 7 the year after

Steve Ballmer was in Australia at the end of last week visiting the carrier Telstra. Msmobiles.com tuned in to his webcast and posted a breakdown of all that was said – including Windows Mobile 6.5 arriving in 2009 followed by version 7.

A lot of business waffle was passed from his lips, with talk of software services and hosted business applications from the likes of Exchange, Live meetings and their ilk.

During the Q & A is where he got interesting and not in the over excited and zealous way, with the ‘won’t please somebody medicate me now’ act that he’s known for.

When someone asked “what can we expect from Windows Mobile in next 12 months?” his answer made peoples ears stand to attention, whilst surely waking everyone else up.

He lead with ‘some good work has been done by Microsoft’ without mentioning any specific examples, he also passed along that Windows Mobile has been sold on 20 million devices.

Then, on the same answer he dropped the clanger by confirming ‘Windows Mobile 6.5 for next year’ and ‘Windows Mobile 7 for Q3 of 2010.

Sounds like he also put down Google’s Android by utter sound bites along the lines of it’s ‘just their first phone’ and that ‘Android has no business model’.

For more on the see msmobiles.com here; our hearty thanks to them tuning in and breaking it all down.