Microsoft to bet on lucky 7 for Windows Phone branding?

Just when I thought I had finally mastered Microsoft's branding strategy around Windows Phone, it looks like it's about to change.

Last year at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) show, Microsoft officials said "Windows Phone" would be used as an uber-branding term to describe all phones running Windows Mobile. Microsoft would continue to use version numbers, however, to describe the Windows Mobile releases powering those phones. So a Windows Phone could be running WM 6.1, 6.5, 6.5.3, etc.

This year, signs are pointing to Microsoft adding a version number to Windows Phone.  There seems to be a "Windows Phone 7" announcement coming, probably on February 15 at this year's MWC. (Microsoft Kitchen blogger Stephen Chapman has a growing collection of "Windows Phone 7" sightings worth checking out.)

I'd assume all Windows Phone 7 phones would be running Windows Mobile 7. (But could some also run Windows Mobile 6.5.x? Not sure.)

I asked the Windows Mobile team for clarification and received this note back from a spokesperson:

"You are correct. Windows Phone is the uberbrand for our phones and Windows Mobile is the name of the OS. That said, we have not confirmed the name of our next generation of Windows Phones. Stay tuned for more on that..."

I'm betting Microsoft is making a branding change because it plans to break backward compatibility with previous versions of Windows Mobile, and needs a way to distinguish which Windows Mobile phones will run which applications. That would explain why the 12 mobile development sessions at Microsoft's upcoming Mix 10 conference are listed as "Windows Phone" and not "Windows Mobile" sessions....

Or maybe Microsoft has decided, as a result of the largely upbeat reviews of Windows 7, that 7 is its lucky number and it might as well try to get some of that magic to rub off on Windows Mobile? It would definitely help Microsoft's "three screens and a cloud" consumer messaging if the three screens that it is connecting all had similar branding instead of totally different version numbers and names.

Does this mean there will be Windows Phone 8s and 9s? (And will there be any connection between them and future releases of Windows, beyond the number?) I guess that's another "stay tuned" thing....

In any case, here's hoping there will be more mobile answers than unanswered questions after next Monday's press conference with CEO Steve Ballmer.