Much of what drives the popularity of these highly portable devices is their rapidly improving hardware capabilities. These devices now provide high-quality displays, cameras, increased memory sizes, and powerful communications capabilities that were unimaginable not long ago. Windows Mobile 5.0 puts these powerful device capabilities and much more into easy reach of developers.

Windows Mobile 5.0 introduces a new generation of platform application programming interfaces (APIs) that expose rich multimedia support, rich two-dimensional and three-dimensional drawing capabilities, easy interaction with device hardware such as cameras or global positioning system (GPS) devices, straightforward interaction and integration with Pocket Outlook, and improved communications capabilities. These new APIs provide not only greater application capabilities, but they also improve developer productivity by encapsulating the details of these features in the platform, which allows developers to focus on the specific needs of their applications.

Windows Mobile 5.0 is the first platform to expose both native and managed versions of platform APIs, which allows developers to choose the most appropriate development model based on their skills and application appropriateness. Windows Mobile 5.0 also incorporates many API enhancements to provide greater continuity between Windows Mobile devices and Windows desktop and server computer platforms, allowing developers to use a common skill set across all Windows platforms.

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