Arrived in Australia for Liberation Day, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer was invited at a Telstra conference to debate on the future plans of the Redmond giant. After the announcement that delayed Windows Mobile 7.0 for 2010, I was a little disappointed and thought it would not see another update to the current 6.1 version.

I guess I was wrong, as Steve Ballmer made a round-about of what's to expect in the next 12, 18, 24 months in terms of Windows Mobile software. He mentioned an interesting roadmap of future releases placing Windows Mobile 6.5 as certain to be launched next year and probably Windows Mobile 7.0, after that, in 2010.

No specific piece of information about Windows Mobile 6.5 was disclosed, but Steve Ballmer 'leaked' some insights of the new operating system. Therefore, users should expect an improvement of the interface and flow of the software. Still, the main attraction of the next year's release will probably be the integration of the Zune software into Windows Mobile 6.5.

“Now, we built the Zune hardware with the Zune software - and what you’ll see more and more over time is that the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices, etc.," stated Steve Ballmer.

Moreover, sources close to Microsoft revealed it is possible that the new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system would be sent to various partners for testing during the next month. If everything goes well, we will probably see it launch no later than Q1 2009.

These pieces of information come as proof for earlier rumors which surfaced the Internet after Motorola’s CEO casually mentioned Windows Mobile 6.5 in a conference call. More details will probably leak in the future weeks, but one thing is certain, Microsoft is readying a new updated version of its Windows Mobile OS.