One of the interesting facts that was announced during TechEd this week in New Zealand was that there now is a team of 1000 people working on Windows Mobile 7 (note, branding was later changed to Windows Phone 7). That’s a fairly sizeable team and suggests to me that Microsoft are really going to pull something solid out of the bag for this release next year.

It looks as though Microsoft might well not be stopping at 1000 staff on WM7 either as there are currently 65 job listings for new Windows Mobile related jobs listed online (the source is no longer online).

My thoughts are if you throw together what’s in Windows Mobile 6.5, the Zune HD, a new Office 2010 client for Windows Mobile, Silverlight + Flash, plus whatever cool new tricks are up Microsoft’s sleeves and they have a great chance of delivering an incredible release in 2010.

That said, I’m actually quite pleased with the features of my latest Windows Mobile (the HTC Snap from Telecom NZ attached to the Vodafone network), and will be even happier if they release Windows Mobile 6.5 for it on Oct 6.