Microsoft have officially unveiled Windows Mobile 6, the successor to Windows Mobile 5. As with all things Microsoft they have renamed the versions, with “Pocket PC Edition” becoming Windows Mobile 6 “Professional”, and the more basic “Smartphone” edition will be branded as “Standard”. There are of course the UI tweaks one would expect, but visually everything is pretty much in the same place it’s always been.

There are however some interesting new features, particularly HTML support in email. HTML emails have always been a slight no-go area for mobile platforms as the sheer amount of content makes the size of the email extremely large. We already know that Exchange Direct Push to a Windows Mobile 5 device is particularly bandwidth hungry when compared to solutions such as BlackBerry, and while rich email is a nice thought, there must be concerns over the running costs of data usage.

Microsoft are also set to to bundle in new versions of mobile Outlook and for “Professional Edition” Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can also expect to see tighter integration tools for synchronizing devices with Windows Vista.