alt Hacker News> the Windows CE kernel team was less than a dozen people!
It showed
CE was a dog and probably a big part of the reason Windows Phone failed. Migrating off of it was a huge distraction and prevented the app platform from being good for a long time. I was at Microsoft and worked on Silverlight for a bit back then.
Windows phone 7's kernel was amazing. It was a complete rewrite from the old kernel and had incredible performance, minimal resource usage, and an amazing power profile.
IMHO the reason for Microsoft's failed phone venture was moving onto the windows kernel and 2xing system requirements.