Windows Embedded Roadmap Updated for Windows 8

A series of announcements beginning in Nov. 2012 and continuing in early 2013 provide an evolving roadmap for the Windows Embedded Business’s embedded OSs and platforms. Organizations are using these embedded products to build devices from simple kiosks and point-of-sale terminals to industrial machines and medical monitors to capture key operational and transactional data for business decision makers. These organizations and the partners who serve them should review the new roadmap, which signals improvements and changes to both the traditional embedded OSs and platforms.

Targeting Devices for Intelligent Systems

The Windows, the Windows Phone, and the Windows Embedded businesses all produce OSs that share common technologies, such as the OS kernel. The products of the Windows and the Windows Phone businesses are general purpose OSs used by OEMs and device manufacturers to produce standard devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones that target a large number of enterprises and consumers. The Windows Embedded Business, in contrast, delivers embeddable OS products for OEMs and device manufacturers to build highly specialized devices that perform business-specific processes or tasks such as welding automobile chassis on a factory floor, monitoring patient health in a hospital, or managing sales transactions via point-of-sale terminals or kiosks.