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Join Dieter and Mal as they talk up the week's Windows Mobile News. Dieter discusses the Nokia E71 from a WinMo user's perspective and he and Mal give the ZuneHD a bit more thought.

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It's the Sunday rumor mill here in Windows Mobile land, and on today's plate is the Samsung Omnia Pro (cue HTC's lawyers), brought to us by hdblog.it. [via coolsmartphone]

While highly unofficial – and the rendering you see above is of hdblog's "own creation and does not reflect the real shape" (and putting your blog on the phone's shell kinda gives that away) – the rumor surrounds an 800x480 AMOLED touchscreen, 5MP camera with stabilizer and flash, and a 624MHz processor. No word on RAM and ROM sizes.

Supposedly the Ominia Pro will become more official this summer and cost about 500 Euros. A launch with Windows Mobile 6.1 is mentioned, with an upgrade to WM6.5 to come.

That said, folks, here's a little tip from your friends at WMExperts: When you're sitting in your basement Photoshoping together a Frankenphone for the Internets, remember to slap on the Windows flag button if you're going to even mention Windows Mobile 6.5, m'kay?

With the prospect of Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Mobile 7 on the horizon, we certainly can sympathize with all the Palm fans out there who are chomping at the bit to finally get their hands on the Palm Pre. If you've hung in there this long, you definitely deserve a reward.

And our cousins at PreCentral.net are delivering, literally, with a massive giveaway:

Think you have what it takes to win a FREE Palm Pre? Time to put up or shut up! PreCentral.net is giving away FIVE Palm Pre Phones the day that the Palm Pre is released. In addition, we’re sweetening the deal by making them into full-on Palm Pre Packs, including:

• A Palm Pre Smartphone on Sprint
• A $100 Amazon Gift Card to fill your Pre up with music
• A Touchstone Charging Station & Battery Cover
• Any case from the PreCentral.net Accessory Store
• A Set of Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth Stereo Headphones (A $99 value) to rock out with your Pre

Hit 'em up at PreCentral.net for all the deets on how to win.

But don't feel left out, loyal Windows Mobile fan. We might have a few goodies of our own for you in the very near future. Stay tuned.

Microsoft has reported it's Third Quarter results for the period ending March 31, 2009. The report shows a 6% decline in revenue from the same period last year. While a reported revenue of $13.65 billion isn't too shabby, it's the first year to year loss decline in Microsoft's 34 year history. The report included a $290 million cost for severance charges related to the plan to reduce up to 5,000 positions at Microsoft and $420 million needed to offset impairments to investments.

According to the release from Microsoft, Revenue in Client, Microsoft Business Division, and Server & Tools was negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and Server markets. Revenue from enterprise customers remained stable during the quarter. Despite the loss, Microsoft didn't seem too concerned. “With our continued R&D investment and our broad suite of products and services, we remain in a great position to compete and gain share in the marketplace,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

While the Global Economy had it's hand in why the declined occurred, lagging sales in laptops, the rise in popularity of "netbooks" and the investment losses helped as well.  The Server and Tools Division was the only group to show growth in the report (about $230 million) and XBox 360 sales increased about 30%, putting the gaming system well ahead of last years total sales figures.  So it's not all bad news.

Microsoft is still on track to release Windows Mobile 6.5 later this year and Windows 7 during fiscal year 2010 and those releases might be the boost Microsoft is hoping for.  Microsoft's full release and report can be found here.

A reader asked over at the report of Microsoft's Quarterly Report what number of phones worldwide use the various mobile operating systems. Well as fate may have it, the answer fell in out laps this morning.

Electronista.com is reporting on an AdMob March 2009 report that shows how each OS stacks up worldwide and in the United States.

According to the report, in the U.S. Apple has approximately 50 percent of traffic where RIM gets 22 percent. Windows Mobile has 11 percent in its home arena, and both Android and Palm lay claim to 6 percent. Hiptop represents 4 percent while Symbian earns just a single percentage point. Worldwide, Apple drops to 38 percent, RIM is at 11 percent, Symbian 37 percent, Palm and Android are at 3 percent, Hiptop at 2 percent and Windows Mobile comes in with 6 percent.

The one caveat on these reports, they are based on AdMob's advertising requests and not necessarily sales figures. AdMob is a mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web. So while this bodes well for Apple in the U.S., the report is based on ad sales as opposed to unit sales.

I am sure that the sales figures will be slightly different.  Microsoft reportedly selling 20 million units worldwide in 2008 and Apple claims 37 million units sold.  The one problem with Apples sales figures is that it combines the iPhone and iTouch; a trend that is becoming more popular with Apple.  I wonder if Microsoft includes PDA's that run Windows Mobile in their stats?

Believe it or not, we've been working all this time without a firm date of when we'll start seeing the official release of Windows Mobile 6.5. (Yes, we're fully aware of more nefarious ways of getting it right now.)

Just before Mobile World Congress and the official announcement of WM6.5 came a story from ZDNet saying that we'd be looking at September. At Steve Ballmer's presentation in Barcelona (watch it here), he'd only say "later this year." But in a transcript of Microsoft's fiscal year (different than the calendar year most of us follow) third-quarter earnings report, the launch window is specifically narrowed to this:

"You can expect to see phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 by the fourth quarter of this calendar year."

Of course, anything can happen, but we're taking that to mean we should see Windows Mobile 6.5 officially released by October. Hopefully we'll find out more in a couple of weeks at the TechEd event.

Lordy knows what exactly has been updated with YouTube's dedicated video client, but it jumped from v2.0.2 to v2.0.9 sometime...recently.

One obvious and welcome change is program compatibility – finally – with 320x320 devices (before it would rotate and crash on Treos), so that's pretty cool. We also imagine they've improved their streaming codecs and optimized the app a little. 

So if you had some problems back when it debuted, you may want to take another chance: http://m.youtube.com

Let's face it: Our attention spans are short. The HTC Touch Diamond 2 has been out overseas for, what, a week now? Been there, read that. (But we're also still pretty darn impressed and can't wait to get one here.)

So let's turn our attention to an excellent and very in-depth review of the Touch Pro 2 from Russian site Mobile-Review. [via] Their conclusion of the 3.6 inches of high-res goodness? Pricey, pretty, but the build quality seemed a little suspect. But overall a very solid phone.

Get your translated read on here.

While a number of you probably celebrated Earth Day yesterday by driving to work in second gear (or was that just us?), the folks at CTIA made themselves a little more useful and released a statement supporting micro-USB as the standard for the "Universal Charging Standard" initiative.

Developed by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform industry standards group and recently adopted by the GSMA, the UCS aims to reduce energy consumption and enhance the customer experience through the adoption of a single “one-charger-fits-all” solution for new wireless devices by January 1, 2012. The UCS will use the Micro-USB format as the common universal charging interface, and use energy efficient chargers in compliance with U.S. “Energy Star” requirements for external power adapters that will provide an estimated 50% reduction in standby energy consumption.

Sounds good to us. But another 2½ years before any standard would go into effect? Sigh.

 Businesswire via Phonescoop