Microsoft Planning to Launch MobileMe, App Store Clones at Mobile World Congress?

It's been known for some time that Microsoft was planning to launch its own version of Apple's iPhone / iPod Touch App Store, but a new report indicates that at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in February, they will not only launch that store, called SkyMarket, but a MobileMe competitor as well, named SkyBox.

SkyMarket has been known about since September, when job listings confirmed its existence, and the MobileMe competitor is an natural extension of such a move. The "Sky" moniker makes a lot of sense, knowing that Microsoft already has its Windows Live SkyDrive service for storing files in the cloud.

Neowin.net cites unnamed "sources close to Microsoft," stating the following:

SkyBox: this will offer the same sorts of services that MobileMe does, including syncing of contacts, email / SMS, calendar, files, and the like into the cloud. Unlike Apple's MobileMe service, however, it's possible Microsoft will allow this to work with non-Windows Mobile devices.

SkyLine: This is a SMB service, which will provide hosted Exchange service with the business' own domain name.

SkyMarket: This is the App Store clone.

It's hard to gather all that much excitement around these services, though, as Windows Mobile still fails to hold up well when compared to Apple's iPhone or even Symbian.

Also expected to be intro'ed at the Mobile World Congress is Windows Mobile 6.5. This is, in reality, a stopgap measure in place of Windows Mobile 7, which has reportedly been delayed to 2010.