The second-to-last keynote of the day was by Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) Robbie Bach, who addressed the hundreds in the audience with the message that you can’t just think about Microsoft in mobile as an operating system. “This is a company-wide effort to build the software and services that are necessary, and Microsoft is very committed to making that happen,” he said. He said they are going to appeal to consumers and business users through choice—by providing multiple handsets from flips to touch screens, and on the software side, they will continue to develop, and partner with others. As expected, Bach announced Windows Mobile 6.1, the operating system that will be shipping this year. It will be up to the carriers to update people’s existing handsets.

Most of the presentation (webcast here) focused on a demonstration, so here’s a look at some of the updates:

From the home screen, there’s new functions designed to make it easier to use:

-- Getting Started: This is where a user can set up everything from Bluetooth to email, to the clock.
-- Music and Photos: see photos and songs either on the device or a memory card.
-- Settings: change ringtone. one setting called automatic, sets it to vibrate automatically when your calendar sees you are in a meeting.

Other features in 6.1:

-- Copy and paste functionality.
-- Filtering capabilities that can search for email in your inbox.
-- Multiple select, so you can select many emails at a time to delete them or move them to another subfolder.

Live Search: A new version is coming out this Spring. One of the new features is called MyCollections, an RSS reader.

New version of Internet Explorer:

-- Desktop like browsing from phone: In the demo, they showed a Facebook page. Another feature is similar to the popular Opera browser, where you can zoom in and out by placing a box on the part of the page you want to see closer up.
-- Full version of YouTube, that’s not an application.

• @ CTIA: Microsoft Launches Windows 6.1 With Few New Tricks; Others May Beat Them To It