It may not be as intuitive or attractive as OS X on the iPhone, it may not be as new and zeitgeist as Android, but someone has still seen fit to laud Windows Mobile: version 6 of the mobile OS this week won the GSM Association’s 2008 award for “Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service“.

“A leading platform for business owing to the ease of integration with Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. For the SMB market in particular, Windows Mobile 6 is an attractive proposition” GSM Association judge’s comments

A cynical man, woman or child might note that, since Microsoft Exchange is also made by, well, Microsoft, it would be both a surprise and non-inconsiderable oversight if WM6 was incompatible with it.  In my experience, setting up a smartphone running WM6 to access an Exchange server is still frankly too complicated: why can’t the server give me a unique code that I plug into the handset, which promptly retrieves all the settings itself?

If I sound harsh, it’s only because I care (a bit); the iPhone’s ease of activation and setup has shown users just how straightforward a cellphone can be, and Windows Mobile needs to catch up if it wants to retain market share.  It could also do with some plastic surgery: as the screenshots of version 6.1 show, Microsoft still haven’t quite got the hang of putting together a pretty mobile OS.

Congratulations Microsoft; now go and work harder!