Internet Explorer (IE) 6 for Windows Mobile is coming to China first.  Looks like Microsoft understands the size of the huge Chinese market to partner with China Mobile on making IE 6 available to its customers on its Samsung Omnia phones.

Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft’s director of Windows Mobile, mobile communications business, said:

“Our target is not to convert existing users of the competing phones like the iPhone or Google’s Android. We want to grow faster than the market.”
“We want to have users in [emerging markets] get their first online experience with Windows Mobile.”

Microsoft claimed IE 6 would provide a “high-quality browsing experience on your device that more closely resembles a desktop browsing experience.”

The features in the new IE 6 are not defined by version numbers. For instance, although this release is called Internet Explorer Mobile 6, there are components from other versions of Internet Explorer for the desktop. One example of that is the support for Jscript v5.7 which was brought over from Internet Explorer 8 for the desktop.

IE Mobile 6 requires more powerful advanced devices so it will not be available as an upgrade or direct download for current phones.  You will see IE 6 in all the new phones coming up. 

Features Unique to Internet Explorer Mobile 6:

• Support for Website META Language (WML)
• Non-touch Pointer navigation experience
• Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 (optional)
• Touch and Gesture support for Windows Mobile Professional
• Mobile device optimizations to wrap text to the screen
• Standards Support
  • HTML 4.01
  • XHTML 1 and XHTML 1.1 (partial)
  • XHTML Mobile Profile (20011029)
  • CSS 2.1 (partial) and CSS 3 (limited)
  • DOM 1 (full), DOM 2 (partial), DOM 3 (limited)
  • ECMAScript 3rd Edition
• Improved AJAX Support
  • Internet Explorer Mobile 6 has the JavaScript 5.7 engine from the Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta.
• Flash Support
  • Adobe Flash Lite version 3.1 is a plug-in designed to work with Internet Explorer Mobile 6 which lets users enjoy Flash applications on Windows Mobile devices.
• Script Support
  • Internet Explorer Mobile 6 supports JavaScript to enable rich AJAX. Internet Explorer Mobile 6 also supports Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) to provide active scripting to users.
• DirectX Transforms
  • Internet Explorer Mobile 6 allows image filters to be applied to an image by using CSS.
• User Agent Strings
  • Internet Explorer Mobile 6 can display both mobile customized and non-customized Web sites.
  • Internet Explorer Mobile 6 can identify itself as a desktop browser or as a mobile browser depending on the setting.
  • For Desktop view Internet Explorer Mobile 6 has the following User Agent string: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
  • For Mobile view Internet Explorer Mobile 6 has the following User Agent string: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Window CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile 6.0) See Appendix A for more information.