Chuong and I spent around two hours watching the keynote from Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach from Microsoft, hoping that there would be some significant news about Windows Mobile. Well, that didn’t happen, despite Ballmer’s HUGE focus on the mobile phone as one of the pillars of Microsoft’s areas of investment (the other two being PC and TV, with the cloud being the common connecting element). Here’s a bit of a recap of what happened with Windows Mobile:

1. There was mention of IE 6 mobile coming “later this year on new devices” (yeah, we know) – it was shown on the Palm Treo Pro

2. We got a look at the first official mobile Netflix application, which has elements of the YouTube application on the Diamond/Pro/HD – nice flick scrolling, large finger-friendly buttons, etc.

3. The only mention of a future version of Windows Mobile came through this video where a product manager (Greg Sulliven) mentions that “later this year we’ll also announce a new version of Windows Mobile that’s really going to have new ways for you to interact and great news ways to seamlessly connect to what you care about.” Is this 6.5? 7? Could he have been more obscure? =D

So overall, nothing terribly interesting was said about upcoming Windows Mobile versions or devices. We’ll keep an eye to CES to see if anything surfaces.