(March 19, 2003) - In a move to turn as many of the existing seven million Visual Studio .NET developers as possible into developers for the Pocket PC and other Windows CE devices, Bill Gates today announced that Microsoft was officially releasing the .NET Compact Framework. This launch lifts all of the licensing restrictions which had previously been placed on .NET Compact Framework code, which was made previously available as a part of the Visual Studio .NET 2003 Final Beta.

"This is a really big event for us," Ed Kaim, Microsoft's product manager for the .NET Mobile Platform told .NET Developer's Journal. In addition to the release of the .NET Compact Framework, Kaim said, there were numerous co-announcements planned by vendors of .NET Compact Framework components. Most notable, perhaps, amongst these vendor announcements was a product from Odyssey Software which will allow .NET Compact Framework developers to easily interact with virtually any existing ActiveX components they might have on Windows CE - a feat which previously was extremely difficult.

Another part of the announcement is that Microsoft is set to give away about 25,000 Pocket PC devices to its Visual Studio .NET and MSDN customers. Although the exact mechanism of this giveaway is yet to be determined, it will probably involve a coupon that purchasers of either Microsoft product will be able to return in exchange for a 400 MHz Viewsonic device, featuring 64MB of RAM and 64MB of ROM - which, significantly, will be the first device to have the .NET Compact Framework actually "burnt" into it!

In additional news, Microsoft has released numerous "customer success stories" from organizations that have already successfully leveraged the Compact Framework in the creation of useful applications. These organizations include Pepsi Bottling Company, Tesco, and Northrop Grumman