Microsoft showed off its new Internet Explorer Mobile 6 browser.

Microsoft Corp. is close to launching a new Windows Mobile browser that the company’s development team touts as an experience that will resemble surfing the Internet on a desktop, according to a blog post on the company’s Web site.

The move comes as a number of Windows Mobile device makers remove Internet Explorer Mobile in favor of other browsers, such as those from Opera Software ASA. For example, the new Xperia X1 smartphone from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications includes the Opera 9.5 Internet browser.

According to Microsoft’s post, emulators and documentation for Internet Explorer Mobile 6 are now available.

Features of the new browser include improved fidelity, layout fixes to accommodate a mobile screen, deeper integration with search, enhanced cursor navigation model and multiple zoom levels.

Reaction to the announcement was mixed.

“Microsoft is doing a terrible job with Windows Mobile,” wrote Tenero Romano in the comments section of Microsoft’s blog post. “Microsoft thought that the market was going to stall if they did not make any improvements and you failed miserably on WM.”

FrankPr countered that he likes what the development team is doing and urged developers to try out the emulator before complaining.

“Great work, IE Mobile team, we have been waiting for this for some time,” FrankPr wrote.

A member of the Windows Mobile team by the name of Khush also commented with additional information. Khush wrote that the new browser will show up in devices at the end of 2008 or early 2009 and it cannot be treated as a download for existing handsets because it “requires more powerful, advanced devices.”

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