Device Management for Windows Mobile Devices

  • Article

Device management enables the mobile operator, corporation, or user to make changes to the configuration and software of Microsoft® Windows Mobile™-based Smartphone and Windows Mobile™-based Pocket PC. Three components — the Short Message Service (SMS) Router, Push Router, and Configuration Manager — all work together to configure the device. Device management features include:

  • Changing core configuration and registry settings.
  • Configuring, adding, updating, and removing software.
  • Updating operating system components, including executable files and libraries.
  • Personalizing and adding user interface (UI) components.
  • Activating software available in read-only memory (ROM) or installed over the air.

This section describes how Smartphone and Pocket PC handle device configuration at the various component levels.

The following diagram illustrates the architecture for device management through over-the-air (OTA) device configuration.

An external source, such as the mobile operator, can use the preceding component architecture to update the configuration of Smartphone and Pocket PC. These updates may be generated from the automated billing and provisioning systems that the mobile operator uses. After an update request has reached the device and been processed by the SMS Router, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) stack, and Push Router, the device uses Configuration Manager to process a configuration request internally. The configuration request is encoded in an XML document format. XML documents can also communicate queries and setting information between various device components and the user interface.

Note   The over-the-air (OTA) update, query, and deletion of the Owner Information settings is not supported on Pocket PC, Phone Edition.

See Also

Push Message Features | SMS Router | WAP Security | Push Router | Configuration Manager

Send feedback on this topic to the authors.

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.