Just days after he demonstrated Windows Mobile 6.5 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed that the follow-up, Windows Mobile 7, will be released shortly after in 2010.

Windows Mobile 6.5 devices may not be available until the fourth quarter of this year, but now many users may skip it altogether with version 7 on its way.

"We've made a nice release announcement last week of Windows Mobile 6.5," Ballmer said, according to a Microsoft transcript. "We've got Windows Mobile 7 coming next year. We're getting more and more synergy with Windows, so the browser improvements, et cetera, should be quite rapid."

Ballmer made the announcement at a strategic update summit Tuesday in New York.