According to a source in the handheld industry, Pocket PC 2003, the upcoming version of Microsoft's operating system for handheld devices, will be launched on June 23.

According to information leaked on several websites and newsgroups, many of the changes in Pocket PC 2003, codenamed Ozone, will be related to improving its wireless capabilities. This includes a new and improved Connection Manager, which should be music to many users' ears as it is one of the most complained about parts of the current operating system. The new Connection Manager is supposed to be easier to use for beginners while offering advanced users more control over connections.

The new OS will allow developers to write applications that are optimized for the XScale processors that are at the heart of most handhelds. For end users, this means there will be new versions of applications that run even faster than they do now. However, these XScale optimized apps will run only under Pocket PC 2003. Of course, the new OS can run just about all software written for Pocket PC 2002.