According to those device hounds at Engadget, the HTC Universal will be on sale from T-Mobile in Germany later this week. If this is true, I think it makes it the first Windows Mobile 5 device in the marketplace and makes our German friends very lucky - I've been playing with my Orange M5000 for a few weeks and it's excellent. The device feels solid, the keyboard is very usable and the screen is crisp as you like. I'll let you know as soon as we have confirmation of UK shipment dates from the operators though it's already on the eXpansys website and Orange's.

This is a pretty interesting report if you're deploying Exchange and/or thinking about connecting mobile devices to Exchange - with SP2 of course this becomes even more compelling. Enough about my favourite topic for now though :)

The scope of this Radicati report from the exec summary is

"This study provides an analysis of Microsoft Exchange from 2000 through 2009.  We examine revenue and installed base market share data for Microsoft Exchange in the following segments:

1.      Corporate Messaging Software:  CPE messaging software that is deployed within an organization

2.      Messaging Software for Service Providers:  Messaging server software designed for service provider customers (xSPs), including ISPs, ASPs, telecom operators, portals, wireless providers, and more. 

So hopefully that should prove useful if you're thinking "where is the market for (mobile) email?" between now and 2009. Just one stat to whet your appetite:

• Between 2004 and 2005, the installed base of Exchange 2003 grew 60%.

The report is a pretty easy read that is mainly tablular in format so go ahead, take a look :)

Jonathan over at Sentient sent me this great Skido cartoon recently - good fun and if you do any kind of sport, you should check this application out. Running on both Smartphone and Pocket PC, the SportsDo range of products utilises GPS to provide realtime information whether you're skiing, cycling, running and more. This really is a killer app and I wrote an article about it a while back on windowsmobile.com as I use this on my mountain back to track my speed, calories, distance and compare with previous trips.

The UI is very intelligently designed for an application that will be used on the move and is very intuitive. Don't take my word for it, go check out their webiste and download an eval version!

I know many of our mobile partner community are out there connecting Windows Mobile to SBS so though you may like to kno wthta th e The Official SBS Support Blog is now live. "This site will host technical articles and discussions regarding a wide variety of SBS-related topics" It promises to be a great resource.

El Reg has spotted the forthcoming Mio GPS smart phone - though it's actually a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. Pretty decent spec and I have long craved a device with built in GPS to use on my favourite programs (CoPilot) with. It raises the question of what is the ideal device and of course it's one that is tiny, has amazing battery life, a large amount of memory, wifi, Bluetooth, 3G and GPS. It doesn't exist (yet!). I have a lot of devices and still use my C500 Smartphone as my primary device but do love the iMate Jam for it's looks, size and features. eXpansys just announced they will soon ship the iMate k-jam which is roughly the same dimensions though a bit thicker to accommodate a slide out keyboard!! The have also announced they'll soon have the iMate Jasjar available too - basically the Universal 3G Pocket PC that Jason has been blogging about a lot lately.

it's going to be an intersting few months on the device front as some very cool products come to market both via mobile operators and independently via folks like eXpansys. I'll come back to the topic of my favourite device and favourite applications soon...but now I'm off to say goodbye to "our Marie" - a longstanding Windows Mobile legend in Microsoft.