Did Windows 10 annoucement bury WEHH8/8.1?

WEHH8-9-10

Now that Microsoft announced Windows 10 and everyone had their chance to marvel at the new-old Start Menu and the ‘enhanced’ Command Prompt, let’s talk enterprise mobility impact. Windows 10 is positioned as the “One Windows for all devices”. What happens to WEHH8[.1] and the recently released devices?

Well, given that

  • Microsoft has never offered upgrade between major versions of it’s mobile OSes (WM6 -> WP7 -> WP/WEH8)
  • Microsoft has adopted the path of killing the previous generations of their OSes as soon the new ones are released (mid-2015 for Win10). Even though OSes are formally supported, there’s not a lot of going on besides security patches.
  • WEHH isn’t even listed in the Product Lifecycles and Support Table, where one can still wind WEHH6.5 and even CE3.0.
  • First WEHH8 devices have seen the light after ~20months past the OS announcement, supported by just two vendors: Panasonic and Pidion.
  • WEHH8.1 support ends 2019, while WEHH6.5 support ends 2020. WEHH8.0 is, apparently non-existent anymore, as no references could be found on MS website.
  • WEHH8.x is incompatible with WM applications, and they have to be rewritten.

Would you buy a WEHH8.x device now (for WM upgrade or new installs)? I wouldn’t. Would you buy a WEHH10 device when it comes out? Time (and Android market share in the Enterprise) will tell.

 

5 thoughts on “Did Windows 10 annoucement bury WEHH8/8.1?”

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  1. Arsen,

    Suggestion for next time. It’s always good to break out the acronym for the first mention. WEHH? Had to google it. I think Microsoft marketing dropped the ball on picking that… Nothing shorter and more accurate than “Windows Phone”, but I guess its a branding thing with a bad taste in people’s mouths they are trying to avoid.

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  2. Mike, fair point, but “Did Windows 10 annoucement bury Windows Embedded Handheld 8/8.1?” written in 20+ size font did not look nice. 🙂

    As of naming, that’s a sad story of WM/WEHH that I typically tell in the trainings, since this is not for writing 🙂 It is a branding thing to differentiate between enterprise (embedded) and consumer (phone) branches of mobile Windows.

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