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As the Mobile World Congress gets closer and closer it is becoming clear that the show in Barcelona may be a potential Gotterdammerung for Windows Mobile. Just as CES 2009 was a make or break for Palm, the same may be true for Windows Mobile at MWC 2009.

Business Week today has published a story that confirms the various rumors that have been floating around regarding what we can expect to see in WinMo 6.5. They say as follows….

On Feb. 16, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to announce a major overhaul of the company’s mobile strategy. Some of the new initiatives are purely catch-up. Ballmer will unveil an online app store that lets users of Microsoft-powered phones download tools, games, and other apps. (Apple opened its own app store in July, and Research In Motion (RIMM), Nokia (NOK), and others have announced plans for their own app stores.) Ballmer will also announce a new service called My Phone that lets mobile-phone users automatically sync photos, contacts, videos, and other files to a personalized Web site and then gain access to that content from a PC or any Web-connected device.

More importantly, we have Todd Peters, Windows marketing head for Windows Mobile, quoted saying…

We’re going to double-down on the Windows brand. When people go shopping in the future, we want them to ask specifically for a Windows phone.

Windows Phone? Doesn’t sound like the name change away from Windows Mobile that many people have been speculating about. To me, it sounds like the marketing for Windows Mobile as a brand will be more aggressive in the future. We may be seeing an end to customized vendor GUIs that seem to try to hide the OS underneath and more of a PR stress on the fact that your PC, Netbook and Phone all run Windows, convergence in action.

The article goes on to state that a complete rethink of Windows Mobile as a brand has been going on at Microsoft, with the Mobile division at Redmond working more closely with the PC division. Considering the positive buzz in the tech community around Windows 7, Windows Mobile 7 can only benefit from the association.

Whatever WinMo 7 will do in 2010, WinMo 6.5 needs to make a splash NOW, or at least not sink like a stone.