Arne, what is your opinion of WM today and looking forward? Is it even worth it for any dev to contemplate developing on WM seeing as there seems to be yet another delay to WM 6.5 and the myriad of devices to code for? Microsoft is moving so slowly with WM and their competition is moving swiftly, who knows what we will see from them next year when WM will still be looking ahead to the next version which will hopefully finally be competitive. Do you forsee any audience for WM phones at that point?

That’s quite an interesting question. First of all: Yes – I have no doubts that Windows Mobile 6.5 will be available soon and on a wide range of devices (I’ve already seen many official Beta ROMs on upcoming devices so yes, we will get Windows Mobile 6.5 very soon). Also I have some little knowledge of Windows Mobile 7 and it’s definitely worth to wait for. I don’t say that time will stand still and we will not see great Android (and even iPhone) enhancements but Windows Mobile 7 will be something great. And surely I prefer to even wait some extra months to get something new and fresh then getting another update of Windows Mobile 5/6 again.

From the developer standpoint I think it’s wrong to develop for one platform only anyway. Unlike the PC market (which is still dominated by Windows) the mobile phone market was always fragmented. In the very beginning we didn’t noticed because mobile phones were just dumb phones but all of them ran on propriety platforms. Now we have a couple of smartphone platforms: Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, webOS and iPhone and I think it makes sense to port applications across all these platforms where possible. If not across all platforms than it makes sense to select 2 or 3 preferred platforms. Furthermore the introduction of widgets across all these platforms makes cross-platform developing easier. I’m sure that a Windows Mobile widget can be easily ported to webOS and vice versa so I think developers might have to rethink of their strategies in which standard/language an app should be developed.

Anyway, to make a long story short: No, Windows Mobile 6.5 is still not what we all want but nevertheless, it’s a great OS, maybe the best Windows Mobile (smartphone) OS ever and it’s the forerunner of Windows Mobile 7 which will unite to Windows Phone (according to yesterday’s DigiTimes info). I can completely understand if a customer is bored by another version of Windows Mobile 5.x/6.x and if he tries something new; but I’m sure latest with Windows Mobile 7 he will consider to come back to Windows Mobile again. As a developer I wouldn’t give up Windows Mobile development yet. Not now, where Microsoft is introducing its own app store and working on a transition to Windows Phone. It’s just 12 months from now to more info about Windows Phone and a developer should use this time to work with Windows Mobile as well as with other platforms (personally I would suggest Android and webOS since both offers the most flexibility, similar to Windows Mobile).