Microsoft employees at TechEd 2009 admitted that the user interface for Windows Mobile 6.5 was hurried and incomplete, while Silverlight support will have to wait until a later version, according to Ars Technica. The unusually candid comments were made by panel members speaking about developing applications for the mobile platform. The company is also working on a widget engine that will support apps built from HTML and JavaScript.

"The reason why we couldn't complete the interface on Windows Mobile 6.5 is because of time," explained Loke Uei Tan, Senior Product Manager on the Windows Mobile team. "We only spend what, eight months, nine months, to build 6.5 from ground up and it's actually an amazing engineering feat. But, in order to do that, we had to do some prioritization and we had to cut certain features." The UI capabilities will eventually be carried out through the entire platform.

A recent report suggests development delays have caused significant problems with the unconfirmed 'Pink' smartphone project. The team allegedly planned on integrating technology from Windows Mobile 7, but the lack of progress has forced the developers to seek alternatives. Pink is believed to represent a smartphone platform, with particular design guidelines for third-party manufacturers.

"Silverlight will not be on Windows Mobile 6.5, unfortunately," admitted Tan. "Due to a lot of reasons, we want to make sure the experience is better for the next version. So we will hold off until then."

The company also provided additional details surrounding its decision to charge $100 for the first five widgets or apps submitted to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. "In the spirit of widgets being considered first class citizens, a widget is in fact an application, and it is in fact certified in the same way as an application," said John Bruno, a Marketplace team member. "Slightly different criteria but definitely the same classification of citizen."

Microsoft continues to disclose additional details of Windows Mobile 6.5 through the course of the TechEd conference that runs until the end of the week.