Windows CE 5.0 is a successor to Windows CE

Windows CE

Microsoft Windows CE is an operating system developed by Microsoft for embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows...

 4.2, the third release in the Windows CE .NET family.

It was first released on July 09, 2004. Like its predecessors, Windows CE 5.0 is marketed towards the embedded device market and independent device vendors. Windows CE 5.0 is billed as a low-cost, compact, fast-to-market, real-time

Real-time operating system

A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 available for x86

X86 architecture

The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...

, ARM

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

, MIPS

MIPS architecture

MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...

, and SuperH

SuperH

SuperH is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Hitachi. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems....

 microprocessor

Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...

-based systems.
Windows CE 5.0 builds on previous Windows CE releases in its adoption of shared source

Shared source

Shared source is an umbrella term covering some of Microsoft's legal mechanisms for software source code distribution. Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, launched in May 2001, includes a spectrum of technologies and licenses...

.