Oliver Block, one of Windows CE developers, wrote in his diary that participants of the last conference devoted to integrated systems in San Jose asked him the same questions. They were interested if CE was killed by its developers going forward to the ARM-platform, or if developers were using Visual Studio and whether all Windows Embedded products were based on different SKU.
Mr. Block thinks that programmers who specialize in apps development for Windows Mobile and many others ask such questions because:
• Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Tools are still integrated in Visual Studio 2005 only, and they disappeared in the 2008 version.
• Visual Studio 2010 does not support the Smart Device development (it was created to motivate the development of native and .NET CF-applications for Windows CE and Windows Mobile / Phone).
• The long waited release of the next version of Windows Embedded CE was postponed for several times.
• It is not clear, what technologies were used in Windows Phone 7.
So Oliver Block has given us the direct answer: Windows CE is not dead. He has said that developers are working on Windows Embedded Compact 7, which soon will be released, and Microsoft will support its for the next 10 years at least.
We believe that Windows Embedded Team is making a lot to add new features and new tools to support all these new functions. Does it look like a dead product? Definitely it is not!
Tags: Microsoft, Visual Studio, Windows CE, Windows Phone 7