Where are the Windows Mobile 6 SDKs?

Since we announced Windows Mobile 6 at 3GSM last Monday, a couple of people have asked me "where are the Windows Mobile 6 SDKs?".  The good news is that for most developers, their existing Windows Mobile 5.0 application will just work on Windows Mobile 6* and you can use the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK to build your Windows Mobile 6 applications.  Of course, smart developers will want to test their applications on Windows Mobile 6 before they say they support Windows Mobile 6 and the easiest way to do that is using a Windows Mobile 6 emulator image!  Where are the emulator images?  In the Windows Mobile 6 SDK of course!  So that brings us back to the original question, when can you get hold of the Windows Mobile 6 SDKs?

The answer : March 1st

So what was that 6 SDK download that appeared briefly on Feb 12th?  Well, that was a case of somebody pushing the wrong button while they were preparing the download details page in our Download Center Tool which caused the SDK pages to be published briefly - DOH!  March 1st was and still is our target date.  For those of you who want to be on the cutting edge, March 1st should give you enough time to test your apps on Windows Mobile 6 before the first wave of Windows Mobile 6 devices get into customer hands.

One more thing.  Once we release the Windows Mobile 6 SDK on March 1st, we're going to keep working on it to include new documentation, more sample content and improved emulator images.  Our target date for the "refreshed" SDK is May 1st so be sure to check back on May 1st to get an even better version of the SDK.

 James P

 * Caveat : This assumes that you use published, supported APIs; that you write only to My Docs/your app directory and that you confine registry activity to keys under HKCU.**

** Caveat 2 : This list isn't exhaustive ;-)