Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is getting ready to release on the market a new version of its operating system for mobile phones, the Windows Mobile 6.5, which should provide users with a wide range of improvements when compared to previous releases of the platform, while also offering them a series of new features, unavailable before, like access to the company's Windows Marketplace for Mobile application store.

Although it is rather uncertain when the OS will actually come to the market, mobile phones to run under it have been rumored to surface sometime in the September-October time frame. The number of devices to feature the platform was expected before to be of around ten, up until now, as David Weeks, Windows Mobile product manager, said in an interview with the CarphoneWarehouse Magazine that there would actually be 31 handsets running under the OS that would hit the market in 2009, and that 15-20 of them were expected to be launched in the UK.

When talking about the mobile phone market in the UK, David Weeks stated that Windows Mobile-powered handsets saw a lot of traction on the market, and that their performance hadn't been affected by the launch of G1. At the same time, he also stated that the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 into the market would allow the handsets running under the Microsoft platform to gain more market share. According to him, Android is not expected to affect the sales of Windows Mobile-powered phones.

The presence of mobile phones running under Windows Mobile in the customer space is reported to be based more on the OEMs’ interest in making the platform suitable to users than on Microsoft's interest in it, though it seems that all this will change as soon as Windows Mobile 6.5 will come to the market. In addition, the future iteration of the platform, expected to surface sometime in the second quarter of next year under the form of Windows Mobile 7, should be able to take the user experience to even higher levels.

As many of you might already know, one of the brand new features that Windows Mobile 6.5 is expected to come with when launched is the support for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which we learn that has just opened up for registration. The post on the Windows Mobile blog announces that “developers can now Register to participate in Windows Marketplace for Mobile,” so that they can “develop, test, certify and distribute their Windows Mobile applications via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.”