Windows CE is a mobular OS, so anyone can make any device with nearly any
combination of its components. The CF is simply another component, so it's
really up to the OEM if they want to incl;ude it or not.
Windows Mobile - the new name for Pocket PC and SmartPhone - is a platform
based on Windows CE. Think of WM as a separate OEM. Microsoft dictates
that some specific features from CE must be present in the device to be a
Windows Mobile device, plus they add in features that are not available in
CE alone.
CF is a feature that is not required, but an option to the WM device OEMs.
Microsoft provides it in the AKU (adaptation kit update) that they provide
to the OEMs to build their device OS. The OEM does not have to use the CF,
but most. What this means is that the CF version is typically tied to
what's in the AKU (though there's nothing preventing them from adding a
newer version of the CF to an older AKU).
IIRC, CF 2.0 is part of AKU 3.0 and no devices are shipping with it that I
know of. So that menas that I know of no WM devices currently shipping with
CF 2.0. There are many CE devices shipping with CF 2.0, as it was available
a year ago, and many OEMs started shipping it right away in those devices.
So you may ask, why is WM so far behind, if general CE devices have had it
for a year. It's a good question. Part of it is that WM devices have a
long certification and testing process - CE devices have none. That menas a
generic CE device can usually be brought to market faster. The other reason
is that CF 2.0 wasn't in an AKU until 3.0, which is very, very new, so it
wasn't simple for WM OEMs to include it in their devices - they had to
manually add it - and so it usually didn't happen.
Hope that clears it up a little anyway.
