With approximately 2,300 stores and over 30,000 employees home and abroad, A.S. Watson ranks among the largest store chains in the world in this sector. It is anticipated that the agreement for the European stores will be eventually extended to include A.S. Watson's stores in Hong Kong, China, and the Phillippines.

The Retalix StoreLine POS software will be running on Wincor-Nixdorf terminals at the A.S. Watson store sites.

Retalix describes StoreLine POS as a robust and feature-rich point-of-sale application that runs on XP Embedded and various other operating system platforms. StoreLine POS is hardware independent, supports a wide range of peripherals, and featuring an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface, the company said.

"In combining Microsoft's Windows XP Embedded, with its retail-hardened reliability, and Retalix's functional point-of-sale solution, we're delivering a robust POS platform to AS Watson to compete in the European health and beauty space," said Michel H. Annink, EMEA group manager, retail industry at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to delivering leading technology to customers worldwide to support their business objectives. Through our technology investments, and our work with technology leaders like Retalix, we're focused on creating an environment where we can collectively deliver world-class solutions to retailers."